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Aftermath of plane crash in NJ on I-287 north in Morris County gallery (5 photos) MORRIS TOWNSHIP ? Moments before his plane corkscrewed into a North Jersey highway Tuesday, killing all five people aboard, business executive Jeffrey Buckalew told an ...
Enlarge Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger Sections of the single engine airplane that crashed Tuesday, taking the lives of 5 people, three adults and 2 children along with a dog, are strapped a flatbed truck on the shoulder of Route 287 North, as crews continue to search the woods for wreckage. (Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger).
MORRIS TOWNSHIP ? Moments before his plane corkscrewed into a North Jersey highway Tuesday, killing all five people aboard, business executive Jeffrey Buckalew told an air traffic controller the high-performance aircraft was icing up, a federal investigator said Wednesday.
Ralph Hicks, an air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said that while it was far too soon to declare a cause of the catastrophic crash, his agency would be closely examining whether the pocket of icy air Buckalew hit some three miles up caused the plane to malfunction.
"The pilot confirmed he was picking up ice," Hicks said at an afternoon briefing. "How much ice was on the plane, we don?t know, and we might never know."
Investigators have previously said Buckalew, an experienced pilot en route to Georgia with his family and a business colleague, spoke with a controller about icy conditions ahead and sought to climb to a higher altitude to avoid them.
At least one other pilot in the area, at the controls of a commercial jet, radioed in to report severe icing between 14,000 feet and 17,500 feet, Hicks said.
View full sizeFrank Cecala/The Star-LedgerBuckalew had reached about 18,000 feet when radar contact was lost. Shortly after 10 a.m., about 14 minutes after takeoff from Teterboro Airport, the plane barreled earthward in an uncontrolled spiral, shedding pieces before slamming into Interstate 287 in Morris Township, witnesses said.
Killed were Buckalew, 45, a partner and managing director at the Manhattan investment bank Greenhill & Co.; his wife, Corinne, also 45; the couple?s two young children, Jackson and Meriwether; and Rakesh Chawla, 36, a married father of three and Jeffrey Buckalew?s colleague at Greenhill. Authorities said the family?s dog also was killed.
The NTSB briefing came as investigators spent a second day gathering pieces of the single-engine, turboprop plane, a Socata TBM-700. One section of wing, lodged in a tree 30 feet off the ground, had to be cut free by a crew wielding chainsaws.
Spread across a half-mile, the items will be shipped to a warehouse in Delaware, where NTSB investigators will reassemble what they can in an effort to determine a cause, a process expected to take at least six months, Hicks said.
A day after an aircraft crashed onto Route 287 in Morris County killing all 5 passengers aboard, officials collect battered fragments of the plane. (Video by Robert Sciarrino / The Star-Ledger)
The Socata was not equipped with a black box, though Hicks said a GPS unit on board was recovered. If the unit was on and functioning, it could yield data helpful in pinpointing the plane?s movements.
Records show Buckalew received his pilot?s certificate in 2002 and was instrument-rated, meaning he could fly by instruments alone, and without the aid of air traffic control, during periods of poor visibility or in the dark.
The plane?s response to the icy conditions is certain to play a central role in the probe. Hicks said the Socata had a wing de-icing system ? pneumatic "boots" that rapidly inflate and break up any ice that forms ? but it was unclear if the system was in operation at the time.
Jessica Calefati/The Star-LedgerMeriweather and Jackson Buckalew, in first and fifth grades, respectively, posing with their pet dog for a recent Christmas card. The two children, along with their parents, their dog and a colleague of their father, were killed Tuesday morning when their plane crashed just off Interstate 287 in Morris Township.
Aviation experts say icing can develop suddenly as "supercooled" droplets of water in the air smack into a moving object and freeze instantly. Such icing might cause an engine to fail or an instrument to read inaccurately. It also might interfere with the aerodynamics of a plane, causing it to dive.
"What the wings do is produce lift," said Ken Paskar, a longtime pilot and aviation consultant based in New York City. "When ice develops on a wing, it changes the shape of the wing, airflow becomes disturbed, and you lose lift."
Buckalew?s trip Tuesday morning was a familiar one. Three months ago, his wife and children moved to Corinne Buckalew?s native Charlottesville, Va., where Jackson and Meriwether were enrolled in a private elementary school.
Jeffrey Buckalew, friends said, flew back and forth in his plane each weekend, staying in the family?s Upper East Side apartment during the workweek.
Audio of air traffic control communication before the fatal plane crash near I-287 in Harding, Morris County, that took the lives of all five passengers on board.
National Transportation Safety Board lead investigator Ralph Hicks speaks about yesterday's plane crash in Morris Township which claimed the lives of five people. (Video by Mike Roy/The Star-Ledger)
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I wonder if that nearby traffic camera happened to be facing the area where the plane went down. That had to be a scary sight for anyone that happened to be watching it at the time...along with those on the roadway driving right by it when it happened.
As the NTSB does its investigation, I am sure they will look at the plane's history -- undoubtedly this type of airplane had experienced severe icing conditions in the past. The article details that the plane was equipped with anti-icing boots, but I doubt they will ever determine if they were deployed. Whenever I read stories like this, I just can't understand why someone so wealthy would want to fly himself and his family around and not hire a professional pilot. He obviously had the money to do that... Although he may have been experienced, he evidently was very good at making money on Wall Street, and spent the great majority of his time with his business. A professional pilot flies each and every day, and certainly has had the hours in the air where he or she would have experienced a strange icing condition before... Such a sad story at Christmas time....
Roxbury2011 ? I am sure his DE-icing (as opposed to ANTI-icing system) system was turned on. But this system is only designed to be used in an emergency to get a plane through icing conditions if no alternative is available. The design is not robust enough to allow a plane of this type ? especially at near maximum weight ? to fly SAFELY through severe or prolonged icing (i.e. within a margin of safety). I also believe the pneumatic boot system is an inherently faulty design because it allows for ice accretion behind the boots to accumulate, thus contaminating the wing and causing it to lose lift or forcing the plane to go out of control (i.e. via uncommanded aileron snatch). Most pilots make the mistake of thinking this boot design is as good as the marketing brochures says it is rather than what the actual technical manuals and tests show, thus giving them a false sense of security.
Maybe. But there is a lot disagreement amoung pilot and the FAA regarding when to blow boots. Most of that revolvs around the bridging issue. The FAA has held several hearings regarding this. The TBMs wing is not that different from a Pilatus or Meridian.
What is VSI? The only VSI I'm aware of in aviation is Vertical Speed Indicator, which makes no sense in the context you use it. Is there another VSI in aviation?
Roxbury2011 ? I am sure his DE-icing (as opposed to ANTI-icing system) system was turned on. But this system is only designed to be used in an emergency to get a plane through icing conditions if no alternative is available. The design is not robust enough to allow a plane of this type ? especially at near maximum weight ? to fly SAFELY through severe or prolonged icing (i.e. within a margin of safety). I also believe the pneumatic boot system is an inherently faulty design because it allows for ice accretion behind the boots to accumulate, thus contaminating the wing and causing it to lose lift or forcing the plane to go out of control (i.e. via uncommanded aileron snatch). Most pilots make the mistake of thinking this boot design is as good as the marketing brochures says it is rather than what the actual technical manuals and tests show, thus giving them a false sense of security.