Probably not.

According to crash investigators, the pilot had flown this particular route many times before, and they theorize that the 1,078-foot tall main structure and 137-foot mast were actually serving as one of his GPS reference points. The dense fog present that morning probably didn’t cause him much concern, as he knew how much time it typically took to travel from point A to point B.

The problem likely occurred when he picked up a tailwind along the way, causing his plane to incrementally travel faster than his instruments were indicating. This in turn could have caused him to misjudge the tower’s distance, and because small private aircraft like his Cessna are not typically equipped with ‘foreign object alarms’ like those required on commercial jets, the pilot never knew he was closing in on the tower until he actually hit it. This theory is supported by the fact that there was no evidence of evasive action being taken.

Despite the likelihood of this scenario, the accident remains under investigation and the official cause of one of aviation’s most unusual occurrences remains undetermined.