Shortly before a corporate jet crashed Nov. 10 in Akron, killing all nine on board, one of its pilots was warned that visibility was low.
The alert came from a flight instructor who had just landed at Akron Fulton International Airport.
According to a preliminary report released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board, the flight instructor heard the pilot say he was 10 miles from the airport. The flight instructor told the pilot that his plane “broke out at minimums,” meaning that his plane descended from the clouds at the lowest allowable altitude.
The flight instructor reported the jet pilot acknowledged the transmission with, “thanks for the update.”
“Given what we know so far, visibility was a problem,” said aviation safety expert and aviation lawyer Gary Robb of Kansas City, Mo. “The avionics may have failed in some way to give safe and proper information to the pilots or the pilots may have become spatially disoriented, causing them to lose position in the air and to strike power lines or another fixed obstacle.”
“At that point, at the minimums, is where the pilots should make their decision to either land or go and try to find another approach,” said Joe Alcorn, a commercial pilot, who is working on his certification to become a flight instructor. The pilot would have to use instruments to guide the plane to the runway without having sight of it.
“It pretty much means they would go around if they didn’t have the airport in sight. … The general thumb of rule is to stay high enough so you can execute a safe landing in case there is an emergency,” he said. “So if you are above a populated area, you know you’d like to at least stay above 1,000 feet above any obstacles, but an airplane can fly lower than the minimums on an approach.”
The NTSB initial report says conditions were misty and overcast with winds blowing from the southwest at 9 or 10 miles per hour. Visibility was 1¾ miles and there was some cloud layer with holes in it.
The chartered corporate twin engine jet, which crashed in the 3000 block of Mogadore Road about 1½ miles from the airport runway, destroyed a four-unit apartment building. No one on the ground was injured.
The jet was based at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport in Florida. It left the Cincinnati Municipal Airport-Lunken Field about 11:12 a.m. on the day of the crash and arrived at the Dayton Wright Brothers Airport about 11:25 a.m. The airplane remained parked on the ramp there until it departed for Akron about three hours later.
About 2:52 p.m., a motion-activated security camera located about 900 feet to the southeast of the crash site recorded the airplane as it came in over the surrounding trees with its left wing down.
The airplane was destroyed by the crash and ensuing fire.
The fire consumed most of the airplane, but the airframe, engines, primary flight controls and landing gear were all accounted for at the crash site and are being analyzed.
On board the flight were a pilot, co-pilot and seven employees of Pebb Enterprises, a Boca Raton, Fla., real estate company. It was the last leg of a two-day business trip to look at possible acquisitions in Ohio and other Midwest states.
The remaining portion of the apartment building is scheduled to be razed Thursday morning by the Bob Bennett Construction Co. of Norton. Akron’s development engineering manager, Brad Beckert, said generally there is a 10-day waiting period by the EPA for any asbestos removal in a building, but the waiting period was waived because of the emergency.
Marilyn Miller can be reached at 330-996-3098 or mmiller@thebeaconjournal.com.