Investigators look for cause of plane crash that killed 8

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."

Staff Writer Bill McAuliffe contributed to this report.