UPDATE from http://www.thatsracin.com/mld/thatsracin/10021848.htm:
Two days after a Hendrick Motorsports airplane crashed on its way to a race here, killing all 10 members aboard the corporate plane, investigators, airport officials, pilots and aviation experts are still trying to determine what happened. Although the day was foggy, they don't know why the plane missed its landing, why it didn't follow landing procedures for the airport, nor why it plowed into the sole obstacle in the area - Bull Mountain, a 3,211 foot high peak within 10 miles of the runway. "Why they didn't land I don't know. And I don't think anyone else knows either," said Tommy Grimes, the general manager of the Blue Ridge Airport where the plane tried to land. "In my mind, I prefer to think the crew did not make a mistake, that something else went wrong." Federal investigators are still studying the crash site and have tentative plans to remove the plane wreckage today. But it's still far too early for investigators to say what might have caused the crash, said Brian Rayner, the lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. He said he expects the investigation to take "several months."
On Tuesday, investigators spent the day clearing trees and debris away from the crash site, a heavily wooded area near the crest of a ridge, in preparation for the removal. Reporters were not allowed near the crash site, a mile and a half from Bull Mountain Road. But the whine of chainsaws could be heard from the ridge above.
And those at the airport here are piecing together what they know. On Sunday, the Hendrick plane was using what's called a localizer, a radio beacon at the northwestern end of the runway to line it up with the runway, Blue Ridge Airport officials said. The radio beacon only helps the pilot position the plane on a horizontal axis, from left to right. The pilot uses its altimeter on the plane to determine its height. The airport - like countless others its size - does not have an air traffic control tower and uses a non-precision instrument landing system, said Seth Young, an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. That means to touch down safely a King Air pilot needed to see the 5,001-foot runway from at least 400 feet above the ground depending on their own equipment, Young said. Air traffic controllers in Greensboro were guiding the plane into the airport.
As was typical for the airport, the race brought more than the normal traffic. At least three other planes were also trying to land at the same time as the Hendrick plane, Grimes, said. They were waiting in a holding pattern nearby for clearance to land because the race was about to start. The weather had dissuaded at least 27 other planes headed for the airport to fly either to the Danville Regional Airport or to Greensboro, officials at those airports said. But the weather wasn't bad enough to shut down the airport. Though the sky was clouded, the ceiling cover was 600 feet from the ground and visibility extended seven miles to either side. That was well above what the federal requirements of a 400 foot ceiling and one mile horizontal visibility to make the landing there, according to U.S. Terminal Procedures, an FAA handbook for pilots. The Hendrick plane should have been able to break through the clouds, spot the runway and then notify air traffic control, Young said. At that point, he said, the pilot would begin communicating with other pilots in the area on a local radio frequency.
But Grimes, standing at the airport Sunday afternoon, never saw the plane break through the cloud ceiling. "He flew right down the middle of the runway," Grimes said. "He was just not low enough to land. He didn't have visual contact with the runway because we couldn't see him. We could just hear him." There were no distress calls to the Greensboro air traffic controllers guiding the flight, NTSB investigators said on Tuesday. The Beech King Air 200 did not have cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder or recording what happened next, according to the NTSB. The plane also lacked a ground positioning warning system that could have helped warn the pilots about the mountain they faced in front of them. It didn't come with one when it was built in 1981 by Raytheon Aircraft, the manufacturer said. And NTSB officials confirmed it hadn't been retrofitted to have the device. It's not currently required on planes of that size. However the FAA plans to require the devices on such plans starting in March.
Many planes lack the devices, though. A commuter plane that crashed on Oct. 19 in northeastern Missouri, killing 13 of its 15 passengers, also didn't have an updated version of the device. Neither FAA, nor NTSB officials said they were ready to make any comparisons to the Missouri crash Tuesday. Even without the equipment, the plane had a procedure to follow after missing the landing. After missing the runway on Sunday, the plane should have turned sharply to the right, and climbed back up to 2,600 feet above sea level to either try again or head to another airport. Instead the plane ended up about seven miles straight ahead of the runway. It's unclear at what elevation it hit the mountainside. "He should have been turning around and going in the opposite direction," Grimes said. "We don't know what Geensboro told him to do. Or what was going on in the plane." Pilots and traffic controllers can deviate from the federal landing procedures and it's ultimately up to the pilots to make a decision on the landing, Young said.
The two pilots had all the training they needed to fly the plane, FAA records show. Tracy had no records of accidents, disciplines or incidents, the FAA said. Morrison was cited by the FAA in 1999 for a hard landing at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, records show. The landing, after a traffic reporting flight, broke the airplane's front landing gear, an FAA document said. But she was not disciplined. A few minutes after the aborted approach, air traffic control in Greensboro called the Blue Ridge Airport asking if plane had arrived, Grimes said. He told them it hadn't. The National Transportation Safety Board soon will begin airlifting the wreckage of Hendrick Motorsports' airplane from the Virginia mountainside to a recovery site in Delaware, said Rayner, the chief NTSB investigator of the crash said Tuesday. There, investigators will try to piece together the wreckage and examine both propeller systems to try to determine why the plane crashed. The agency also plans to ship what remains of the two turboprop engines to their manufacturer in Canada, he said.
The removal of the wreckage could begin as early as Wednesday and probably will be done by helicopter, Rayner said, because the plane crashed on the mountain's steep southeastern slope, and investigators have been able to reach the crash site only by all-terrain vehicle. Rayner said he doesn't know why the pilots didn't follow the government-approved procedure for a missed landing at Blue Ridge Airport. "At this point, there's no way of knowing what the intention of the crew was at the time," Rayner said. "We're not trying to place any significance on that at the moment." At the Blue Ridge Airport on Tuesday, pilots who fly in and out of the airport questioned what could have gone wrong. "If you fly by the procedures, it's extremely safe," said Matt Broughton, a Roanoke attorney who has been flying for 19 years. Grimes, too, said he was looking for a reason as to why the plane crashed into the mountain. "I think all of us who fly instruments are looking for a reason why," he said. "If you look, this (mountain) is the only point on the chart marked as dangerous. It's the highest point out there."(
ThatsRacin.com)(10-27-2004)
