FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Before a British Aerospace Hawker jet crashed last week, killing all nine onboard, a plane ahead of it successfully landed at the Akron Fulton International Airport — but basically warned the approach would be tricky because of low clouds, according to a preliminary accident report released Wednesday.
“We broke out right at minimums,” the pilot of a single-engine Piper Warrior told the Hawker pilots on a special radio frequency.
That indicated that the Piper descended out of the clouds right at the minimum allowable altitude where a pilot either must see the runway or climb back up into the clouds to try another approach or fly to another airport.
“Thanks for the update,” one of the Hawker pilots acknowledged, according to the National Transportation Safety Board report.
The twin-engine Hawker jet then attempted to make the approach through clouds, mist and limited visibility.
It plowed into the ground, left-wing low, about two miles short of Runway 25, rammed into an apartment building and burst into flames. Both pilots and seven members of a Boca Raton real estate firm perished.
Although the safety board is probing all aspects of the flight, the report indicates the investigation will focus on whether the Hawker pilots adhered to minimum altitude restrictions — or flew below them — in an attempt to see the runway.
The Hawker jet was on a charter flight, operated by Execuflight, based at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. Before the Nov. 10 crash, the real estate executives had flown to Minneapolis, Moline, Illinois, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio.
Because of the bad weather, the jet was flying on instruments. After the Akron-Canton Approach Control cleared the Hawker to make the approach, its pilots notified other nearby flights that it was 10 miles from the Akron Fulton International Airport.
That was when the Piper pilot, a flight instructor on a training flight, alerted the Hawker that the cloud ceiling was low. At about 2:52 p.m. that day, a security camera mounted about 900 feet to the southeast of the accident site captured the jet coming over trees and crashing.
According to official weather observations at the time, clouds were 600 feet above the ground, the visibility was one and three-quarters miles, the winds were relatively light and the temperature was 52 degrees, accident investigator Jim Silliman wrote in the report.
Gary Robb, an aviation lawyer based in Kansas City, Missouri, said because the plane apparently suffered no major mechanical difficulties, either the pilots allowed the Hawker to get too low or their cockpit instruments provided false readings. Specifically, he said the altimeter might have indicated the plane was higher than it actually was.
“The avionics, which is essentially the mechanism that allows pilots to fly blind, might have failed,” he said.
The safety board still is scrutinizing the jet’s cockpit voice recorder. A final report, providing the probable cause of the accident, likely won’t be completed for at least another year.
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