Posted on 03/17/2006 8:02:14 PM PST by VeniVidiVici
Plane crash near Charleston, WV. Plane was being escorted as it was not communicating with tower. No indication yet of foul play.
Waiting for news to catch up.
Admin Mod, no link as of yet. Please delete if need be due to this.
Read post 12 for golfers name.
Well, that is possible. The plane depressurized. Escort planes went up. And if it was supposed to go north from Montana to Minnesoda, if it was on auto pilot would it have gotten that far off? I don't know much about those systems.
Unconfirmed report on airliners.net forums (supposedly taken from local Minneapolis/St. Paul news) said there was one pilot onboard, and it was a "twin-engine" aircraft. Nothing else, and we all know how inaccurate first news reports can be with anything having to do with aviation.
To even make it from Montana to West Virginia, it'd have to be a pretty seriously long-range aircraft. Can't think of a lot of piston twins with that much range, so maybe a turboprop or business jet.
}:-)4
They are saying that he ran out of fuel near Charleston.
I heard about it on kare11 news, but there's nothing up on their web site yet. Local news isn't exactly quick about posting breaking news on their web sites.
They said supposedly 1 pilot on board, looked like a business jet. The airport it was supposed to land at in St. Paul (Holman Field) has a lot of business jet traffic.
The Payne Stewart tragedy is the first thing we thought of when we heard about this.
Can't find any more news about it yet.
Sounds like incapacitated pilot or drug smuggler.
Update from KARE 11:
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=121136
A plane due to arrive at St. Paul's Holman Field tonight has flown hundreds of miles off course, the FAA confirms tonight.
The Beechcraft Baron took off from Montana late this afternoon. It passed over Minnesota and Wisconsin tonight. F-16 fighter jets checked on the plane over Madison but couldn't make contact with the pilot.
The last contact with the pilot was around 7pm central time.
Just before 10pm central time, we've learned the plane is north of Charleston, West Virginia and still heading southeast.
The FAA says only the pilot is on board.
We'll continue to follow this developing story and have the latest on Saturday on KARE-11 News and KARE11.com.
A Beechcraft Baron is a twin-piston-engined plane. It doesn't normally fly at altitudes where oxygen or pressurization is required, though there are some with turbocharged engines that can fly up there at those altitudes. I'm also surprised that one could make it from Montana all the way to West Virginia, especially if he was only planning to fly to Minneapolis.
}:-)4
Finally found something. Can we get the link where it's supposed to be? :-)
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=121136
A plane due to arrive at St. Paul's Holman Field tonight has flown hundreds of miles off course, the FAA confirms tonight.
The Beechcraft Baron took off from Montana late this afternoon. It passed over Minnesota and Wisconsin tonight. F-16 fighter jets checked on the plane over Madison but couldn't make contact with the pilot.
The last contact with the pilot was around 7pm central time.
Just before 10pm central time, we've learned the plane is north of Charleston, West Virginia and still heading southeast.
The FAA says only the pilot is on board.
We'll continue to follow this developing story and have the latest on Saturday on KARE-11 News and KARE11.com.
lol! You all got it!
"I'm also surprised that one could make it from Montana all the way to West Virginia, especially if he was only planning to fly to Minneapolis."
That is pretty amazing. He is way off course.
I forget where Payne Stewart's plane was heading when the pilots were incapacitated, but he was several hundred miles off course when it finally went down. With the autopilots you can find on even a (relatively) small plane like a Baron, if the pilot died or was unconscious, the plane could keep on trucking at a given altitude and in a straightish line until it ran out of fuel, for hours if it had the gas.
}:-)4
Or he was listening to Air America and his brain went dead...
Found this live flight tracker info for the actual plane here:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N18LL
It was posted here:
http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/2665148/
You beat me to it!
He filed for FL270 (27,000 feet)...quite possibly a depressurization, then. I had no idea that a turbocharged Baron could go that high!
}:-)4
Wow, didn't visualize just how far off he was. Quite a way...
It flew right over Chicago?
That must of raised some alarms..
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