The small plane that crashed near the Cross City airport last month, killing two people on board, suffered electrical failures prior to the accident, according to a new National Transportation Safety Board report.
The safety board, which is investigating the crash, said one of the two people on board the small, two-seat Lancair 360 reported there had been an electrical failure, he was transmitting with a handheld radio and that he was requesting that someone manually verify his landing gear was in place as he approached the airport’s runway.
The crash happened Oct. 20 near the Cross City airport in Dixie County, about 50 miles west of Gainesville. The flight was returning from Atmore Municipal Airport in southern Alabama. The NTSB said the purpose of the flight was personal.
The radio report about the electrical issues came as air traffic controllers in Jacksonville said they were unable to communicate with the plane.
In its preliminary report on the crash, the NTSB also cited a witness who lives near the airport, who it did not publicly identify, describing the plane’s engine as “spitting, sputtering, and backfiring through the exhaust.”
The report also said an eyewitness on the ground, who also wasn’t publicly identified, reported that as the airplane flew over an airport building at about 600 feet, the airplane’s engine sounded unusual. That person said the plane descended in a left turn until it was about 100 feet high, when the left wing and nose dropped suddenly, and the plane crashed. The plane’s landing gear was found still retracted.
The plane was experimental — it was not built by a manufacturer and did not receive Federal Aviation Administration certification. Instead, the Lancair was a common kit-built plane, said Aero Consulting Experts CEO Ross Aimer.
“Because it was a kit built… the chances of things not working well are much higher than an airplane that you buy directly from a manufacturer,” he said.
The plane had switched hands several times before its most recent ownership, he added.
One of the two people on board was an experienced flight instructor, Greg Mahler, 75, of Venice, Florida, south of Sarasota. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he was at the controls that day. Authorities declined to identify the other person on board.
The plane had filed a flight plan from Atmore to land at Cross City, but the unidentified pilot asked air traffic controllers in Tallahassee whether he could change the plan to fly south to Venice along the shoreline, according to a review of radio traffic recordings that afternoon.
“We’re going to plan on canceling our (flight plan) when we get to be about 20 or 30 miles north of Cross City then go … down the shoreline,” the pilot said. “Final destination will be Venice.”
The controller told the pilot to advise his colleagues in Jacksonville about the change in plans.
“Roger, OK, will do, thank you,” the pilot said.
Two minutes later, the plane’s transponder, which tells the plane’s location and altitude to the air traffic controller, stopped sending information. A Tallahassee controller asked for its approach, or descent to landing, twice. Mahler’s plane didn’t respond. A controller asked the plane to turn left. More silence.
That time period correlates with the reports of the electrical failure on board.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
