Wellstone Plane Crash Media Survey - Updated
They were no longer in control of the aircraft." said Don Sipola, a former president of the Eveleth Virginia Municipal Airport Commission, who has 25 years of experience flying at the airport. "That will be the $64 question---what occurred in the last few minutes that distracted them or caused them to wrestle control of the aircraft."
Bill King, vice president of Cirrus Design Corp., a Duluth-based manufacturer of smaller single-engine airplanes, said King Air enjoys a reputation as one of the most safe and capable turboprops around.
"The word that comes to mind is 'bulletproof,"' he said.
King said it remains to be seen whether ice played a role in Friday's crash, and he said the boot system employed on the King Air is "a highly respected, highly tested system."
"Something went catastrophically wrong. I don't think this was pilot error," he said.
The aircraft's safety record is particularly impressive considering its widespread use.
Brian Ryks, executive director of the Duluth Airport Authority, said he'd have no reservations about stepping aboard a King Air in Friday morning's weather conditions.
"Performance on take off and landing was suberb. I mean, its got power to spare," Kirton said. "You take off and lose an engine, most folks could bring it down very, very easily on one engine and land a perfectly normal landing."
Johnson noted the King Air 100 has a flexible, boot-like device on the leading edges of the wings that the pilot can make "expand like a balloon to break ice off."
The pilots of Wellstone's plane... Conry had nearly 5200 hours of flying time and the highest certification a pilot can attain, his company said. Guess had 650 hours and was certified as a commerical pilot; he graduated from UND's aeronautics program.
As CNN First Reported: Breaking News.
The crews on the ground found two large sections of plane. The tail section was intact. The weather did not have anything to do with the crash, said the on the scene reporter.
Wolf Blitzer tried to correct her.
He said, The plane was flying into the storm of freezing rain, right?
"There is no evidence that weather had anything to do with the crash."
The on-the-scene reporter stuck to her guns.
However, the team was able to make this significant discovery: the plane's landing flaps, which allow a slower and steeper approach to a runway, were extended 15 degrees on EACH wing.
This information tends to discount the possibility, discussed by some local pilots, that one flap may have malfunctioned, putting them in different "asymmetric" positions and causing the plane to slowly turn 90 degrees from its westward approach to the runway in the moments before the crash.
"Investigators...have ruled out physical problems with the pilots and one important piece of equipment."
Another pilot who landed a slightly larger twin engine plane at the airport on Friday, a couple of hours before Wellstone's plane crashed, said in an interview that he experienced no significant problems.
Veteran pilot Ray Juntunen said there was very light ice, "but nothing to be alarmed about. It shouldn't have been a problem."
According to the NTSB, Wellstone's pilots received warnings of icing at 9,000 to 11,000 feet and were allowed to descend to 4,000 feet
Radar tapes indicate the plane had descended to about 400 feet and was traveling at only 85 knots near the end of its flight. It then turned south, dove at an unusually steep angle and crashed
Whatever happened, happened very quickly after they clicked up the runway lights....right after a precise, one-time signal was sent to activate the runway lights. Could that same one-time signal have activated something else?
Only one pilot was required to fly the King Air A100 but they had two as an extra precaution for safety.
Eight people were killed in this King Air A100 plane crash. That is as many as have been killed in the previous 27 years according to the FAA.
politics in play?
He pushed stronger environmental programs while Bush pushed the opposite way.
He pushed hard for genuine measures to counter corporate fraud while Bush pushed for cosmetic ones.
Wellstone was also the lead voice in the Senate, pushing for the investigation of the missing $350 million from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This is the affair in which Secretary of Interior Gale Norton has twice taken the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions about how $350 million disappeared late in the Reagan-Bush administration.
Paul Wellstone is a hunted man. Minnesota's senior senator is not just another Democrat on White House political czar Karl Rove's target list, in an election year when the Senate balance of power could be decided by the voters of a single state. Rather, getting rid of Wellstone is a passion for Rove, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the special-interest lobbies that fund the most sophisticated political operation ever assembled by a presidential administration. "There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone," a senior Republican aide confides. "This one is political and personal for them."
"They have made it very clear that if they could beat one Democrat this year, it would be Paul Wellstone," says Minnesota political consultant Richman. "Paul gets under their skin." "When I first met the President, he called me 'Pablo,'" Wellstone jokes. "That lasted a day or two. Then they started trying to figure out how they were going to get rid of me."
He pushed hard for an independent 9-11 investigation over Bush and Cheney's strongest objections.
Wellstone voted against giving Bush a free hand to invade Iraq and it actually increased his popularity here in Minn. He was pulling ahead of Coleman and it looked like he would win reelection.
Was it sabotage, assassination or an accident? You decide
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00013.htm
I wonder if NSTB or anyone else tested for explosives or any other "funny substances and residues" or the case is closed.
Josh