Posted on 11/18/2003 11:54:37 AM PST by PeteFromMontana
WASHINGTON - Pilot error caused the plane crash that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and seven others, investigators said Tuesday.
Investigators told the National Transportation Safety Board (news - web sites ) that the twin-propeller King Air A100 stalled when it slowed down too quickly while approaching Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport in northern Minnesota on Oct. 25, 2002. The plane lost altitude, veered sharply, sheared off treetops and crashed 2 1/2 miles short of the runway.
"The flight crew did not monitor and maintain minimum speed," NTSB (news - web sites) Aircraft Performance Group Chairman Charlie Pereira told the board, which will vote on whether to accept the finding.
Wellstone; his wife, Sheila; their 33-year-old daughter, Marcia Wellstone Markuson; three campaign workers and the pilot and co-pilot died. They were traveling to a funeral.
The crash occurred less than two weeks before Election Day. Following Wellstone's death, former Vice President Walter Mondale accepted the Democratic candidacy. After a brief campaign, Republican Norm Coleman won the seat Wellstone had held for nearly 12 years.
On the day of the crash it was cloudy and cold. Crash investigators looked at the possibility icing on the wings contributed to the accident, but discounted that and focused instead on pilot Richard Conry, 55, and co-pilot Michael Guess, 30.
John Clark, the NTSB's director of aviation safety, said Conry and Guess were flying too high and too fast as they began their approach. They slowed down too much as they tried to make up for the mistake, he said. The plane went from 190 mph to 87 mph in the final 90 seconds of the flight.
It's unclear why the pilots didn't realize the plane was moving too slowly. "One of them should have been monitoring the instruments," said Bill Bramble, a human performance investigator for the NTSB.
Interviews conducted after the crash revealed shortcomings in the proficiency of both pilots, investigators said.
During the course of the probe, investigators learned of two instances in which co-pilots took the controls away from Conry as he flew Wellstone to appearances. Just three days before the fatal crash, Conry activated the wrong switch and caused the plane to pitch downward during the climb. The co-pilot corrected his action.
When the plane landed, Wellstone jokingly told Conry to "get some sleep."
Last August, the families of Wellstone and the campaign workers reached a $25 million settlement with Aviation Charter Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn., which operated the flight. At the time, company attorney Mike Lindberg said the settlement was not an acknowledgment of pilot error or responsibility by company management but "a way to avoid ongoing litigation."
Gee (he says w/ sarcasm dripping off his chin), I could've sworn shortly after I heard about this accident, that it was a Right-Wing Wacko Pilot that did this on purpose to benefit the balance in the Senate. Surely I'm not the only one that remembers this slanderous uttering from the extreme DemoncRATic left.
I remember when an engine wasn't properly bolted back to the wing. It was something the pilot wouldn't have been able to see, yet he was still at fault when the engine flow around the wing and crashed the plane.
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