Pilot warned before deadly crash
Five family members traveling to watch baseball tourney killed
The pilot in the June 30 plane crash that killed five family members from Georgia returning from a baseball tournament in Cooperstown had been warned of “moderate and heavy precipitation” minutes before the plane crashed in the Catskills, according to a preliminary report issued Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
All relatives on board died in the crash. The report did not say which one of them was piloting the aircraft.
The plane, a Piper PA-46-310P, took off at 1:42 p.m. from Albert S. Nader Regional Airport in Oneonta en route to Charleston, W. Va. After making radar contact with the plane five miles southwest of the airport, air traffic control instructed the pilot to climb to 10,000 feet and to proceed toward Charleston in keeping with the flight plan, the report said.
“The controller then issued a weather advisory to the pilot of moderate and heavy precipitation off the pilot’s right side ‘for the next 30 miles’ which the pilot acknowledged,” the report said.
Air traffic control then instructed the pilot to climb to 12,000 feet, which the pilot also acknowledged. Three minutes later, at 1:52 p.m., the plane began to turn left, deviating from its flight plan.
“It looks like you’re deviating left for weather and which fix do you want to go uh downstream to?” the controller asked. The plane then began turning right while its altitude began to drop and its speed increased from 120 knots to 213 knots, the report said. The plane climbed again before experiencing “several alti
tude and ground speed fluctuations” until it began to spiral toward the ground.
The data point was recorded at 1:54 p.m. with the plane at an altitude of 6,500 feet and a ground speed of 242 knots.
Wreckage was found half a mile from its last known position and was strewn across a 1.1 mile-long path near the hamlet of Trout Creek in Delaware County, the report said.
The crash killed Roger Beggs,
76, Laura Vanepps, 43, Ryan Vanepps, 42, James R. Vanepps, 12, and Harrison Vanepps, 10. It remains unclear who was piloting the plane when it crashed.
Summer thunderstorms had been reported in the area at the time of the crash.
The crash rocked the suburban Atlanta community where the family lived. Friends, coaches and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp paid tribute to the family.
The NTSB retained the wreckage of the plane. A full investigation into what precisely caused the crash could take up to two years.