01 AUG 2008 _______________________________________ *Eight die as charter jet misses landing at Owatonna airport *NTSB investigates Minn. plane crash that killed 8 *House committee moves to ban in-flight cell phone use *Incident: Delta B763 near Little Rock on Jul 31st 2008, medical emergency, airplane stuck on ground **************************************** Eight die as charter jet misses landing at Owatonna airport OWATONNA, MINN. - As the pilots steered the corporate jet toward the airport here Thursday morning, it looked like they and their passengers had lucked out. Only an hour before, a savage summer storm had pounded the Owatonna, Minn., area with high winds and rain. But as pilots Clark Keefer and Dan D'Ambrosio headed in at 9:40 for an on-time landing at Degner Regional Airport, they appeared to have missed the worst of the weather. One pilot radioed Owatonna with a routine message, saying the plane would need fuel once they were on the ground. Ninety seconds later, the charter flight from Atlantic City, N.J., ended in the deadliest plane crash in Minnesota since the 2002 accident that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone and seven others near Eveleth. Keefer, D'Ambrosio and the six passengers they were carrying to a meeting with Owatonna-based glass maker Viracon lost their lives after the jet apparently landed on the 5,500-foot runway and either couldn't stop or tried to take off again. A witness said the plane tried to get airborne again before crashing wing first into a nearby cornfield. Seven of those on board died at the scene; one passenger died later at Owatonna Hospital. There was no indication that she was able to speak to anyone about what happened before she died, according to Doug Neville, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. Two other executives who had planned to be on the flight changed plans and didn't make the trip. The dead include executives from several East Coast companies that do business with Viracon, including three high-ranking executives of the Revel Corp., developer of a $2 billion casino project under construction in Atlantic City, and representatives of the Tishman Construction Corp., a New York-based construction manager working on the casino project, whose other projects include the Freedom Tower at the former World Trade Center site. Viracon had earlier been awarded a contract to supply glass to the Freedom Tower and Thursday's meeting was to discuss the Atlantic City project. Steele County Sheriff Gary Ringhofer said the Raytheon Hawker 800 jet crashed about 500 feet off the airport runway, leaving a nearly half-mile trail of twisted and broken parts. "It was just a debris field," said Cameron Smith, a mechanic and inspector at the airport who spoke to the pilot by radio minutes before the crash. Smith raced to the scene moments afterward. "There was lots of parts everywhere. It was shredded," he said. Ringhofer said there was no immediate indication what might have caused the accident. By late afternoon, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration had arrived at the scene to begin investigating and interviewing witnesses. An NTSB official said Thursday night that investigators had recovered a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage. NTSB spokesman Terry Williams didn't say when the information from those devices might be available. The NTSB has 14 investigators working on the crash, with assistance from the FBI. Neville said the identities of all the victims would probably be released today by Ringhofer's office. "It's going to be a long process," he said. It was the worst accident at the Owatonna airport since a 2004 crash that killed four area men returning from a Canadian fishing trip. Brad Cole, president of East Coast Jets, the Allentown, Pa., company that operated the plane, was headed to the crash scene Thursday. He said company officials were working with investigators to identity the other passengers on board. Looking for clues East Coast Jets has a good safety history, said Joe Moeggenberg, president of the Cincinnati-based Aviation Research Group. The jet the company used for the charter to Owatonna -- a Hawker 800 -- also has a good safety record, according to Gary Robb, an aviation expert and attorney in Kansas City. The morning's heavy weather in southern Minnesota was at first presumed to have forced the crash. At the Owatonna airport, a gust of 72 miles per hour was recorded at 8:33 a.m., about an hour before the crash. However, by 9:55 a.m., shortly after the crash, the wind was out of the south at 7 mph, while the line of high winds had moved more than 40 miles east, through Rochester, and witnesses said there was only a light rain falling. Roy Redman, president of Rare Aircraft, Ltd., the fixed-base operator that fuels and services planes at the airport, said that one of his employees, Brian Mechura, a welder-technician, witnessed the accident. Redman said Mechura told him that the airplane successfully landed, rolled down the runway and then tried to take off again. "It got airborne, and then the right wing went down and it dove into the ground and disappeared," Redman said Mechura told him. Redman, who called 911 and the FAA in Minneapolis within seconds of the crash, said there was no fire once the plane hit the ground. Redman, however, said there was a tailwind of about 10 knots. Typically, a plane lands heading into the wind, but on Thursday, the charter jet landed with the wind. "The downwind would cause the airplane to move faster over the ground," said Redman, who is also a pilot. Redman said seven employees of Rare Aircraft rushed to the scene in their trucks and cars. Once there, "they just tried to see if they could find somebody and help people," Redman said. "They were calling out to see if they could find anyone. They saw bodies." Redman said he stayed back to try to get the plane's registration number for the FAA. He went to the site about 15 minutes later, but said "it was too late to save them." http://www.startribune.com/local/26140404.html?location_refer=Homepage:lates tNews:4 ************** NTSB investigates Minn. plane crash that killed 8 OWATONNA, Minn. (AP) - Federal investigators planned to spend Friday sifting through the wreckage of a small plane, looking for clues that might explain why it crashed near a regional airport a day earlier, killing all eight people on board. The victims included two pilots and six passengers, all casino and construction executives who were heading to this city about 60 miles south of the Twin Cities for a business meeting. The Raytheon Hawker 800 went down around 9:45 a.m. Thursday, shortly after severe weather had moved through southern Minnesota. The weather conditions, as well as the plane's structure, its systems and other factors, are being examined by the National Transportation and Safety Board, said John Lovell, the investigator in charge. A cockpit voice recorder and a flight management system were recovered and sent to the NTSB lab in Washington to be analyzed. The charter jet, flying from Atlantic City, N.J., to Owatonna, a town of 25,000, went down in a cornfield northwest of Degner Regional Airport, Sheriff Gary Ringhofer said. The wreckage was not visible from the airport, and roadways leading to the site were blocked off. Debris was scattered 500 feet beyond the airport's runway. Late Thursday, the Dakota County coroner was on the scene working to identify victims. Seven people were found dead at the crash site. One died later at a hospital. Two other people who were supposed to be on board did not get on the flight, said Doug Neville, Department of Public Safety spokesman. By late Thursday night, five of the victims had been identified. They are: _ Karen Sandland, 44, a project manager on the Revel casino project who worked out of Tishman Construction's Newark, N.J. office, company spokesman Bud Perrone said. _ Two pilots, Clark Keefer of Bethlehem, Pa. and Dan D'Ambrosio of Hellertown, Pa., according to Brad Cole, president of East Coast Jets, the company which owned the plane. _ Two executives of APG International, a Glassboro, N.J. company that specializes in glass facades: Marc Rosenberg, the company's chief operating officer, and Alan Barnett, its assistant project manager, according to company spokeswoman Amelia Townsend. Revel spokeswoman Valerie Edmonds confirmed that three Revel employees were killed in the crash, but said their identities would not be released until Friday at the earliest. The airport lies alongside Interstate 35 as it skirts Owatonna's western edge. Its Web site describes it as "ideal for all classes of corporate aircraft use" with an all-weather instrument landing system. Neville said the airport has no control tower, and pilots communicate with controllers in Minneapolis. An hour before the crash, a 72 mph wind gust was reported in Owatonna, according to the National Weather Service. Witnesses said the crash occurred after the worst of the storm had passed, with the sky clearing and only light rain. The weather service reported that by 9:35 a.m., winds had quieted to 5 mph, with visibility greater than 10 miles in the Owatonna area, though there was a thunderstorm about five miles from the airport. The plane had been scheduled to land at 9:42 a.m., then take off at 11:40 a.m. for Crossville, Tenn. ************** House committee moves to ban in-flight cell phone use Quiet please: A House committee has moved to prohibit in-flight cell phone use. (Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)A House of Representatives committee threw another hurdle into the path of in-flight cell phone use Thursday, when it voted to ban the use permanently. By a voice vote, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed the Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace--or Hang Up--Act, which was introduced earlier this year by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). The legislation, which now moves to the full House for consideration, would prohibit "voice communications using communications devices on scheduled flights," with exceptions for flight crew members and a federal law enforcement officer acting in an official capacity. In-flight texting, Wi-Fi, and e-mail on airplanes would not be affected. In a statement, DeFazio said that not only is cell phone use aloft an annoyance, but also that airlines should be stopped from using in-flight talking as a potential revenue source. "With airline customer satisfaction at an all time low, this is not the time to consider making airplane travel even more torturous," he said. "Polls show the public overwhelmingly doesn't want to be subjected to people talking on their cell phones on increasingly over-packed airplanes." During the hearing Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) lodged a dissenting voice, saying, "You are trying to legislate courtesy, folks, and that just doesn't work." In the past few years, the federal government has not looked kindly at in-flight calling. The Federal Communications Commissions, with support from the Federal Aviation Administration, already bans in-flight cell phone use, but the agency has the power to revisit the issue at any time. The "Hang Up" act, however, would write the prohibition into federal law. Industry reaction is mixed for now. Though the Airline Transport Association, the industry's main lobbying arm, is not backing the bill, the Association of Flight Attendants, and some consumer groups are supporting a ban on sky-high cell chatting. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the European Union's equivalent of the FAA is moving toward allowing cell phone use on intra-European flights. Air France has already conducted a study of in-flight cell use on one of its aircraft, albeit to mixed results; Ryanair, Emirates and Qantas are considering allowing cell phone use as well. Yet, those airlines could could also be subject to the "Hang Up Act" on flights to the United States http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10004170-1.html?hhTest=1 ************** Incident: Delta B763 near Little Rock on Jul 31st 2008, medical emergency, airplane stuck on ground A Delta Airlines Boeing 767-300, flight DL1033 from Atlanta,GA to Phoenix,AZ (USA) with 238 people on board, diverted to Little Rock,AR due to a medical emergency on board. The passenger was rushed to the University Hospital. When the airplane was about to push back, no towbar strong enough to push the 767 could be found at the airport. The flight had to be cancelled and the passengers accomodated in local hotels. A proper towbar is being brought in from Memphis over night, the flight should continue Friday morning. http://avherald.com/h?article=40a7f812&opt=0 ***************