The Nelons were a famous southern gospel music family but they were onboard a PC-12 that crashed killing 7 people onboard the plane after the pilot made a deadly mistake.
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On a summer afternoon in 2024, a Pilatus PC-12 cruising at 26,000 feet over remote Wyoming lost its autopilot in the clouds and the pilot had seconds to hand-fly the airplane before he lost control.
On July 26, 2024, a Pilatus PC-12/47E departed Nebraska City, Nebraska, on a Part 91 personal flight bound for Billings, Montana. At the controls was a private pilot with single-engine, multi-engine, and instrument ratings and roughly 2,200 hours. Aboard were six passengers, members of the Gospel group The Nelons.
The airplane leveled off near 26,000 feet in instrument meteorological conditions, with an overcast layer and only trace-to-light icing forecast along the route. The aircraft was equipped for flight into known icing and was not expected to accumulate meaningful structural ice. But as it entered an area of precipitation, convective activity produced a powerful updraft strong enough that the autopilot could not counteract it and disconnected.
The pilot declared an emergency, telling the controller he was trying to regain control. Now hand-flying in the clouds with no outside reference, he faced the exact conditions that breed spatial disorientation. The turboprop entered an erratic series of climbing and descending right turns, and the pilot's focus on re-engaging the autopilot likely broke down his instrument scan.
The NTSB determined the accident was caused by the pilot's loss of control due to spatial disorientation in IMC, resulting in an in-flight breakup, with his distraction from the autopilot disconnect a contributing factor. In the final rapid descent the airplane exceeded its maximum operating speed and partially broke up at low altitude. Pieces of the left wing were found nearly a mile from the main wreckage. All seven aboard were fatally injured.
The pattern here is one every instrument pilot should sit with: an automation failure at altitude, in the weather, that instantly converts an easy cruise into a demanding hand-flown recovery. Post-accident examination found no mechanical failure that would have prevented normal operation.
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SOURCES
NTSB Accident ID: WPR24FA257
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Pilot Debrief is hosted by Hoover, a retired F-15E pilot and current pilot for a major U.S. airline. Every video on this channel analyzes publicly released NTSB final reports, factual narratives, CVR/FDR transcripts, and docket evidence to extract practical safety lessons for general aviation pilots. We do not speculate beyond the evidence. We do not blame pilots for being human. We debrief the decisions and the systems, not the people.
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