Pilots warned about poor landing conditions

The report, published today on the NTSB website, details the events of the flight leading up to the crash, from its departure in Cincinnati to a stop over at the Dayton Wright Brothers Airport and then the last flight toward Akron-Fulton worldwide Airport.

The plane was carrying seven people from a Boca Raton, Fla., real-estate development company that was headed to Akron from Dayton.

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.

NTSB says according to that flight instructor on the first plane, they “broke out at minimums”, when attempting to land and alerted the accident airplane to the fact.

The report says one of the jet’s pilots thanked the flight instructor for the update.

Federal authorities have not yet determined why the plane crashed.

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.

A flight instructor, who landed at the airport prior to the Hawker’s approach, was interviewed for the report.

The report said the pilots were in contact with air traffic controllers from a larger, nearby airport about their instrument approach at 10 miles out from Akron Fulton, which doesn’t have a control tower.

NTSB reports though the Hawker was destroyed in the fiery crash, the airframe, engines, primary flight controls and landing gear were all accounted for at the crash site, and the cockpit voice recorder was recovered and sent to an NTSB lab for examination. The jet crashed moments later. A chilling video recorded by a surveillance camera from a business near the crash site shows the jet flying at high speed over trees before hitting the apartment building and exploding.