The National Transportation Safety Board today (Wed) released an eleven hundred page report on the November jet crash in Akron that killed 9 people. The Execu-flight jet was based in Florida and was approaching the Akron Fulton airport in bad weather when it crashed, hitting an apartment building. More on the report from Ideastream’s Mark Urycki.
The NTSB report does not conclude a cause for the accident or fix blame. It does point out some red flags that may have attributed to the crash. One is that the two man crew had logged the jet’s weight at about 14, 000 pounds when it was actually closer to 24,000 pounds. The difference in weight would alter the landing approach.
The co-pilot, 50 year old Renato Marchese, was actually flying the plane at the time of the crash. The report noted he had been fired from a previous airline job for “unsatisfactory work performance.”
The in-flight voice recorder showed he had adjusted the flaps to 45 degrees while still a mile away from the runway. One instructor told the investigators that it would be “nuts” to have the flaps in that position because it would cause so much drag.
In the seconds before the crash, the pilot, 40 year old Oscar Chavez told the copilot “ You're diving. don't dive two thousand feet per minute buddy... "
HOT 1 is the pilot Chavez. HOT 2 is the co-pilot Marchese.
TIME and SOURCE
| INTRA-AIRCRAFT CONTENT
|
14:52:05.1 HOT-1
| you're ** (me there).
|
14:52:06.4 HOT-1
| oh don't.
|
14:52:07.1 HOT-2
| yeah.
|
14:52:07.3 HOT-1
| don't go two thousand feet per minute.
|
14:52:10.2 HOT-1
| when you are fifteen hundred feet above the ground. or minimums.
|
14:52:15.2 CAM
| [sound of cyclical sound, similar to windshield wipers; continues until end of recording]
|
14:52:17.0 HOT-1
| ground.
|
14:52:20.5 HOT-1
| keep going.
|
14:52:22.1 HOT-1
| one point one is for the missed approach.
|
14:52:27.3 HOT-1
| okay level off guy. [spoken rapidly]
|
14:52:27.4 CAM
| [sound of rattle, similar to stick shaker]
|
14:52:28.3 HOT-2
| got it.
|
14:52:30.1 CAM
| [sound of rattle, similar to stick shaker]
|
14:52:31.3 HOT-1
| oh #. (focus). [spoken loudly, rapidly]
|
14:52:32.8 GPWS
| pull up.
|
Then the stalling engines alarm is heard and the sound of the impact is recorded.
No one on the ground was injured. All seven passengers died. Autopsies showed Chavez and Marchese died not from the impact but from smoke inhalation as the craft was engulfed in flames.