Clark Keefer, pilot of the East Coast Jets flight, and copilot Dan D'Ambrosio were working on insufficient sleep and displayed poor coordination with each other when the Hawker Beechcraft plane they were flying crashed on July 31, 2008, while they were trying to land in Owatonna, Minn., the NTSB ruled during a hearing in Washington.
The pilots failed to account for a wet runway and 8-knot tailwind when they touched down on the 5,500-foot runway, and they should have applied a braking system seven seconds earlier than they did, investigators told the board. The system is called a "lift dump," which slows the plane by extending the flaps and air brakes further than they would go in flight.
Realizing they were running out of runway, the pilots hit the throttles to try to take off again, but it was too late, the investigators said. The plane ran about 1,000 feet off the runway, struck an instrument landing system antenna, and hit the ground in a cornfield about 2,000 feet from the end of the runway.
If the pilot had kept trying to stop, the plane might have overshot the runway by 100 to 300 feet, but everyone aboard probably would have survived, NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman said after hearing the investigators' testimony.
"It was a risky, impulsive decision," NTSB investigator Malcolm Brenner told the board. "It was made under high stress."
Both pilots were trying to function on about five hours of sleep, and the copilot was already short on sleep from the night before, Brenner said. Keefer, of Bethlehem, Pa., may have had an undiagnosed sleep disorder, given that he would usually sleep longer than eight hours at night, while D'Ambrosio, of Hellertown, Pa., apparently had insomnia, Brenner said.
"We believe both pilots were not at the top of their game," Brenner said.
Another investigator, Roger Cox, said cockpit voice recordings made it clear the captain was "impatient to land," but Brenner said it wasn't clear why. They were landing a little early and were scheduled to spend two hours on the ground in Owatonna, which would have given them plenty of time to refuel.
While the pilots had "excellent ratings as individuals," Cox said, they "functioned less effectively as a crew." He said the evidence indicates that the pilot made all the decisions, and that they didn't properly follow their approach and landing checklists.
The thunderstorms that moved through the area shortly before the crash contributed mainly because they left the runway wet, the investigators said. Had the pilots gotten a weather briefing en route, rather than relying on a forecast several hours old that had predicted better weather, they might have been better prepared.
The six passengers were working on the Revel casino project in Atlantic City. They boarded the plane at Atlantic City International Airport bound for a meeting at Viracon Inc., an Owatonna glass company.
Construction on Revel was halted a few months after the crash when the economy soured and Revel Entertainment ran out of money with only the exterior finished. The $2 billion project resumed last month when the company secured financing to complete it.
Killed in the crash were Karen Sandland, 44, of Galloway; Marc Rosenberg, 52, of Margate; Alan Barnett, 42, of Absecon; Tony Craig, 50, of Brigantine; Chris Daul, 44, of Northfield; and Lawrence "Chip" Merrigan, 62, of Absecon.
Sandland was a project manager for Tishman Construction Corp. who was working on the Revel project. Craig, Daul and Merrigan were Revel executives. Rosenberg and Barnett were executives for APG International, a Glassboro company that specializes in glass facades.
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