Evidence and debris are still being collected from Wednesday night’s plane crash just outside of Whitesville. The National Transportation Safety Board Inspector Dan Boggs provided updates on the investigation Friday afternoon.
The Owensboro Times recorded a live press conference on our Facebook page with Boggs. To watch the video, click here.
The debris field they are investigating and gathering information from is “extremely large.”
“It covers, I think, over 40 acres, 3 mountain tops; it’s very fragmented right now, and we’re having a very difficult time,” Boggs said.
They have begun collecting pieces from the debris, and the only piece NTSB has been unable to find is roughly half of an elevator.
According to Boggs, the flight, which was the last of an instructional night cross-country flight, had a flight instructor and student pilot on board. The flight was operated by Eagle Flight Academy, based out of Owensboro.
Both the instructor and pilot student have been declared deceased. The Ohio County Coroner revealed the pilot was Timothy McKellar Jr., 22, of Custer, and the flight student was Connor W. Quisenberry, 18, of Beaver Dam.
From what the NTSB has found, the plane took off from Owensboro-Daviess County Regional Airport to Bowling Green-Warren County Regional Airport at roughly 7:55 p.m. Wednesday night — with normal traffic pattern work.
They then departed at 9:55 p.m. Wednesday to return to OWB.
Boggs said the plane reached about 4,000 feet and cruised roughly the entire trip at that level. Shortly after passing Beaver Dam, Boggs said, at roughly 10:45 p.m., the plane began to change course.
“We believe the weather and the wind was blowing them around a little bit. At that point, there are some communications with air traffic control. The flight instructor did contact air traffic control and requested an IFR clearance — which means that when pilots fly along in visual conditions, and it starts to get cloudy and bad, they can ask for an instrument flight rules to fly the rest of the way which he did,” Boggs said.
Traffic control told the plane they would need to turn east to avoid the impending storm. The track shows that a portion of it turned east. From there, the NTSB is still trying to decipher the pattern. They noticed the plane went in circles in the pattern.
At 10:50 p.m., the plane lost communication with the Command center.
Flying at night is a requirement for a pilot to receive their license. However, Boggs said there is no federal requirement to fly during different weather patterns, like extreme rain or wind.
Boggs said everything is preliminary and may change as they are still in the investigation’s fact-gathering stage, which will continue until about Monday. He noted the prospect of a U.S. government shutdown could extend the time the time could be extended.
There will be a preliminary report on the crash in roughly 10-15 days, Boggs said. However, final reports on the investigation can take up to 16-18 months due to the size of information that needs to be analyzed.
“Gathering all this information, weather information, pilot qualifications, interviews, can take a while. There may be some time before the draft final report is published,” Boggs said.
After they’ve collected information on the crash, Boggs said they will begin investigating weather conditions, pilot qualifications, operation and human factors and all aspects of the crash.
The NTSB will also investigate the Eagle Flight Academy to learn more about its protocols and other measurements.
Boggs and the NTSB have also been made aware of videos posted by McKellar on social media that provide a peek into the flight conditions and interactions between McKellar and Quisenberry before the plane crashed.
“We will be diving into that once I get done with the on-scene portion. There is so much perishable information that I have to make sure I get my hands on while I’m here because time and weather deteriorates all that. So it’s important that I get this out of here to a secure location then we can go back and look at things that are out there that we’ve heard about,” Boggs said.
