YouTuber, dad killed in plane crash 1 month after ‘aircraft malfunction’ close call - noob amateur pilot and YouTuber, TNFlygirl, 43, kills self and Dad in high speed plane crash

https://nypost.com/2023/12/10/news/tennessee-aviation-youtuber-jenny-blalock-dad-killed-in-plane-crash/

A popular aviation YouTuber and her father were killed when their plane crashed in Tennessee Thursday — just one month after she posted a video of her facing an “aircraft malfunction” at 4,000 feet.

Jenny Blalock, 45, and her father James, 78, went down around 11 a.m. and crashed on a remote road in Pulaski, a city on the central-southern border of Alabama, according to federal and county officials.

Their bodies were discovered outside the plane, which landed in a “remote” area that was difficult for crews to reach.

“It was just devastating. It was significant damage again. Unfortunately, there were just no survivors,” Bill Myers, director of the Giles County Office of Emergency Management, told 10 News.



The father-and-daughter pair had traveled 180 miles from Knoxville when the aircraft plummeted, FlightAware data shows. They were roughly 10 miles short of landing at a city-owned airport.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation, but it comes just a month after Blalock — known in the community as TNFlyGirl — posted a video of herself executing an emergency landing during an “aircraft malfunction” from 4,000 feet in the air.


“Are we going to make it?” she eerily asks her flight instructor after he points out the plane’s battery had died mid-flight.


Later, she discovered that the plane also had screws loose on its regulator.

Despite the harrowing ordeal, Blalock remained calm and expertly landed the aircraft without issue.

“God bless and fly safe,” the well-known YouTuber told her 16,000 subscribers.

According to her account, she was a “private pilot, flying for fun in a Beechcraft Debonair.”

Blalock, who also is a luxury home builder and designer, frequently filmed her flying excursions with her father since launching her popular channel in 2021.

Their fatal flight appeared to be one of the first the pair had taken together “in a while,” according to a video Blalock posted in November.
Jenny and her dad were not just daughter/father, they were best friends and did EVERYTHING together!” her partner, Brett Thees, said on Facebook.

The Blalock family issued a statement saying they take comfort in knowing the father-daughter pair “were together when they met our Lord and Savior!”

 

[Otoya Yamaguchi]

The thing with those comments is, they don’t generally give pilot’s licenses to absolute morons. You have to put in a lot of hours of actual flying.

I worked in the aviation industry for 10 years. They def do give licenses to retards. Flight hours and memorizing faa exam questions doesn't make you competent

Yeah, Cessna planes are known as "Doctor Killers" for a reason.

they arent. The doctor killer moniker was applied to the extremely popular Beech Bonanza, which wouldnbreak apart because the tail design couldn't handle people being asshats

 

[Otoya Yamaguchi]

Yeah, Cessna planes are known as "Doctor Killers" for a reason.

they arent. The doctor killer moniker was applied to the extremely popular Beech Bonanza, which wouldnbreak apart because the tail design couldn't handle people being asshats

 

[MysticKnight]

Three pages and no "she didn't fly so good." You're slacking, Kiwi-tachi.

Still, I'm surprised how many here are pilots/have experience in aviation and can speak with some level of authority. Maybe it's just the nature of this place where people instantly become experts on any topic given, and I'm just realizing it now.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

How so? I'd've figured a hovering helicopter that lost power would just land, assuming the space beneath them was clear and they weren't too high up.

You have very little time to react, plus a very small distance between you and the ground. It's pretty easy to break your back from a hard landing.
When at altitude, you can easily enter into autorotation because you have time and distance (altitude). When your skids are 5 feet above the tarmac, not so much.

 

[TowinKarz]

Most of the crashes were due to pilots with inadequate training becoming too confident in a high-performance aircraft. Although there were some issues with the original v-tails leading to in-flight breakups when outside the designed performance envelope, leading to a redesign being mandated to strengthen the tail.

This, most of the accidents were the result of overconfident Stockton Rush - types with more money than brains and a belief that safety margins weren't necessary if you were an obvious genius like him. (If I'm not smart, then why am I so rich, huh?!)

My Dad was part of a group of 3 or 4 guys who all pitched in to keep a Cessna Skyhawk at the local airfield in the early 70's when General Aviation was still nominally affordable to middle-class people.

The number of times they saw used car dealers and assistant bank managers pooh-pooh such blue collar planes as theirs in favor of twin engine Beeches?

And then promptly CFIT them into the nearby ridges because they didn't know how to fly on instruments when it would unexpectedly get cloudy on them?

It wasn't exactly rare.

Only problem was they frequently took their friends and families out with them.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

How so? I'd've figured a hovering helicopter that lost power would just land, assuming the space beneath them was clear and they weren't too high up.

"too high up" is like a few feet. Otherwise they have to be quite high up and instantly react to have any hope of autorotation. otherwise it just falls.

The bonanza is a doctor killer because it is expensive, and the V tail makes it do weird things at the worst possible time (normal recovery mechanisms may not happen the way a regular plane would) and doctors aint got time to be practicing emergency shit.

 

[The Connected Nose]

The number of times they saw used car dealers and assistant bank managers pooh-pooh such blue collar planes as theirs in favor of twin engine Beeches?

The 172 is only the most successful aircraft ever. Take care of it, and it'll take care of you. Even the guys I know who fly something way sportier (or fly big iron for a carrier) have a soft spot for that little workhorse.

Shitting on the 172 tells me they probably fast-tracked their ticket with money. That type of asshole is not only sad, but dangerous. That you said they would CFIT because of zero IFR knowledge strengthens that assumption.

 

[Absurdist Laughter]

Do we have any bets on whether or not it gets leaked? Or would a FOIA request work to make them release it?

I'd wager it depends on the news buzz around it. If it fizzles out like a lot of ripples in communities I'd wager we get everything early 2024. Heck, if it seems like this is only causing ripples in the pilot community, I'm sure y'all will get info.

 

[RodgerDodger]

I'd wager it depends on the news buzz around it. If it fizzles out like a lot of ripples in communities I'd wager we get everything early 2024. Heck, if it seems like this is only causing ripples in the pilot community, I'm sure y'all will get info.

They will likely only release a printed transcript. It's footage of 2 fatalities with almost certainly no need to prosecute anybody. At best we may see a carefully curated section of the video that shows her getting behind the aircraft and mismanaging trim settings. Plus somebody correct me if I'm wrong but I think Tennessee is one of the states that adopted a variant of the Dale Earnheart laws regarding images and videos from fatalities.

 

[Absurdist Laughter]

They will likely only release a printed transcript. It's footage of 2 fatalities with almost certainly no need to prosecute anybody. At best we may see a carefully curated section of the video that shows her getting behind the aircraft and mismanaging trim settings. Plus somebody correct me if I'm wrong but I think Tennessee is one of the states that adopted a variant of the Dale Earnheart laws regarding images and videos from fatalities.

Oh yeah, totally, I'm not expecting a liveleaks video. Just the moments up to impact to get a better understanding of what not to do if it is pilot error.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Oh yeah, totally, I'm not expecting a liveleaks video. Just the moments up to impact to get a better understanding of what not to do if it is pilot error.

If you listen to the ATC video from earlier in the flight one odd little detail stands out. ATC clearly knew and recognized her callsign. And were trying their best to babysit her into at least flying in the right direction. I'm thinking none of the local controllers were particularly surprised at the eventual crash. There are going to be a lot of learning moments here that absolutely nobody will learn from. The only true hero is the one instructor that she fired because he banned cameras from the cockpit.

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

Todd Grande chimes in. Analysis starts at 6 minutes.

 

[Fascist Frederick]

So the TNFlygirl channel appears to have been scrubbed of all flying videos, the latest video now being 8 years old... when did that happen and who is responsible?

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

Silver lining is that watching analysis of the TNFlyGirl crash has had some other interesting crashes slip into my feed.

Like the two Egyptian pilots that rented a Cessna to dive bomb pleasure craft in a reservoir in Cali, only to crash the plane then flee to the Middle East to escape local prosecution.

Or the time accumulator CFI in the northeast who was paired with a 20 y/o rookie and was impatient because he wanted to get home before having to wake up again at 0400. So he kept making serial Tiktoks inflight shitting on the kid, wasn't paying attention to the weather and had the plane disintegrate in midair by lightning because they flew too close to the edge.

 

[Caesare]

16000 subscribers in 2023 doesn't really strike me as all that many, unless they were all engaged, I guess. Sorry she's dead and all that, but "well-known" seems like a bit of an exaggeration.

Seems like a lot for "private recreational pilot youtube" if that's a thing.

. I still think you'd have to be incredibly retarded to try and force an emergency after skydive douche, he got fucked by other pilots who examined his video, then he got fucked by the FAA when he lost his license, and I think just recently he got fucked by the state and is serving a sentence.

I love it when stupid, attention seeking assholes on YouTube get fucked 3+ times.

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

So the TNFlygirl channel appears to have been scrubbed of all flying videos, the latest video now being 8 years old... when did that happen and who is responsible?

Thankfully one pilot saved some of them, and made a commentary video on one of her "routine" flights which she fucked up since she was an e-thot.

 

[Corn Syrup Connoisseur]

Thankfully one pilot saved some of them, and made a commentary video on one of her "routine" flights which she fucked up since she was an e-thot.

Watching the video, the average childhood IL-2 Sturmovik player would have had better handle and knowledge of a basic flight than this e-thot.

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

Watching the video, the average childhood IL-2 Sturmovik player would have had better handle and knowledge of a basic flight than this e-thot.

The average IL-2 Sturmovik player would at least take off and follow a compass heading.

 

[JoeBidenSniffMe]

Her flight instructor has to remind her to pull her gear up @ 1:40. Then they deal with ATC who is upset because their altitude is 900 feet off @ 4:00.

Pilots of America are having none of this,

EDIT: According to some YouTube comments, she fired her second flight instructor because he forbid cameras in the cockpit.

I wish I can watch what was going on in this video. I wish someone on Kiwifarms archive this video. Next time archive this video like this on https://ghostarchive.org/ or download this and upload and archive it on Kiwifarms.