http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/172-Crash-At-Nashville-Airport-Unnoticed-For-Hours220892-1.html

Damn,  I really hope that lack of assistance from a sleeping tower drone wasn't a contributing factor.  

All sorts of things could happen, radio out, wrong freq selected,  hard telling not knowing but damn, doesn't sound like the field staff were all that on the ball.

I would think if the tower wouldn't answer up you contact another tower and have them phone over.   That or look up the tower phone yourself on an electronic device.   At 3am I think I'd do that before going in like an uncontrolled field.  

[not a pilot but have been around the fields many years ago]

In my hometown (with a tower) a single engine plane ran out of fuel due to flying into a headwind his whole trip. He ran out just shy of the airport and flew it into a two story house. He walked away from the crash and didn't report it. The family was on vacation and came home to a plane sticking out of their house.

I shouldnt laugh, but damn

This is my based airport.

The morning this crash occurred there was dense fog, necessitating CAT III approaches. The crash occurred at 3 am. At 8 am I checked local weather for a long-distance flight and saw that BNA was low IFR, so I checked for takeoff alternates. Sparta/Upper Cumberland (SRB) is about 50 nm away and was good VFR, and there were other possibilities.

They are saying that ATC was unaware that the aircraft was there, meaning he flew under VFR into an extremely low IFR airport.

The C172 was C-GRJH registered to the Windsor Flying Club.

Pilot's name was Michael Callan from Windsor, Ontario.

The airplane was scheduled to land in Canada on Monday evening.

The body was thrown about six feet from the aircraft and was badly burned.

The wreckage was discovered by flight crews who reported debris on the runway.

Very, very odd.

I flew out at about noon and taxied within about 2-3,000' from the wreck site. There was definitely something just off 2C to the right at about S1 taxiway but it was not recognizable as an airplane. Again, it WAS about 3K away. The runway was still shut down as of 10 am this morning.

How does even a primary target not get noticed by ATC as it stops dead center over the airport?

Sleeping tower controllers have missed my trying to land even after I called on the radio 6 times while 5 feet over the runway.

I hate to have to answer the questions I'm sure will be asked of those controllers...  This is why I teach my trainees to always be looking for the unexpected.  Just because someone is supposed to be talking to approach to land at our airport doesn't mean that someone can't just show up unexpectedly...

"
David Gillies, president of Windsor Flying Club which owns the Cessna, said the pilot, who was unaccompanied, rented the club plane for an overnight trip. "It is not usual for this individual to rent an airplane overnight," he said.

The pilot was certified to fly under "visual flight rules," allowing him to fly in fair weather, and was qualified to fly at night. But the pilot did not have an instrument rating allowing him to fly into weather systems, Gillies said.

Gillies said Nashville airport officials told him the pilot "circled" over the airport "for some time" and that the plane crashed while trying to land about 2:30 a.m. "They've indicated to us that they have tapes of him circling and that the time of his demise was about 2:30," he said.
"

So they watched him on radar while he circled or they looked at old radar feeds after finding him?
 

I bet he flew tell almost out of fuel  trying to get the tower and the runway lights up.  I bet he hit the runway to hard.    sure the tower was asleep.

They went back and reviewed the radar playback