Aviation consultant Robert Fowler noted that Lara did not have many hours flying in the Cessna 501 because he had only recently been certified to fly it. Lara’s former girlfriend, Natasha Pavlovich (who also has experience as a pilot), told HBO Max she was not comfortable allowing the daughter she shared with Lara to fly with him, although he disregarded her wishes.
According to the NTSB report, the Cessna 501’s pilot logbook showed Joe Lara had logged 1,680.5 flight hours and that 83 of those were in that plane. “He logged 39.8 hours of total actual instrument flight experience with 5.9 hours in the accident airplane,” says the report. A pilot who flew with Lara in 2020 told the NTSB that Lara was competent at flying the Cessna 501, but that he had difficulty with the plane’s autopilot, which was a “bit complicated and caused [him] confusion.”
“The accident pilot [Lara] was very reliant on his iPad to help him understand his ‘time in space,’” said the NTSB, quoting the pilot who made the observations about Lara’s competence. “The accident pilot was interested in taking the accident airplane to New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta; however, the pilot said that he ‘made it very clear that [Lara] was not proficient enough to operate in those areas.’”
A simulation of the accident flight shed light on the disorientation Lara likely experienced before the crash. “It was possible that during the descents,” said the report, “[Lara] perceived that the aircraft was nose-up rather than nose-down due to the airplane’s accelerations. Throughout the whole of the flight, it was also possible that the roll angle could have felt much less extreme than it actually was.”
