Plane crashes carrying organ for transplant; 6 die

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The patient lay on the operating table, prepped for transplant surgery. In the air over Lake Michigan, a twin-engine plane sped his way, carrying a team of surgeons and technicians, along with a donor organ on ice.

The plane never made it, crashing into the lake’s choppy waters and killing all six people aboard Monday.

Now the critically ill patient could become the accident’s seventh fatality.

“It was a very sad moment in the operating room” when word was received that the plane had gone down on its way from Milwaukee, said Dr. Jeffrey Punch, chief of transplant surgery at the University of Michigan Health System hospital in Ann Arbor.

Hospital officials and organ-donation authorities would not identify the transplant patient other than to say he was a man, and would not say what type of organ he was awaiting, citing medical privacy rules. But one of the doctors killed was a cardiac surgeon, suggesting the patient was about to get a new heart or lungs.

He was put back on the waiting list for another organ and was reported to be “very critically ill.” Authorities would not comment on his chances of finding another organ in time.

The Cessna 550 Citation crashed about 5 p.m., shortly after takeoff on a flight to Ann Arbor that should have taken 42 minutes. One of the pilots reported severe difficulty steering the plane because of trouble with its trim system, which controls bank and pitch, said National Transportation Safety Board investigator John Brannen.

Brannen said the pilot had signaled an emergency and was making a left turn and heading back to the Milwaukee airport when the plane went down.

Killed were both pilots, two University of Michigan surgeons, and two technicians whose job was to prepare the organ for transplant.

By midday Tuesday, only small parts of the aircraft – including pilot seats and small pieces of the cockpit – had been found, the Coast Guard said. Divers searched in water as deep as 50 feet until Tuesday afternoon when high waves forced them to pull out. The search was to resume today.