EDMONTON - The corporate plane that crashed near Wainwright on Friday, killing all five people aboard, lost its wings as it started to spiral out of control, an investigator said today.

The in-flight breakup of the Piper Malibu owned by A.D. Williams Engineeering Inc. caused pieces of the plane to rip off in mid-air, strewing both wings and the tail section over a four-kilometre area, Transportation Safety Board investigator Wray Tsuji said.

“An in-flight breakup refers to an aircraft that has been overstressed such that the wings broke off,” he said this morning at the board’s west-end garage.

The plane wreckage was brought to Edmonton from Wainwright on the weekend.

“We have to look at everything. We look at the man, the machine, the environment,” Tsuji said.

The pilot, company president Reagan Williams, had lost both his gyroscope and autopilot before he lost contact with air traffic controllers.

Eight minutes passed between the time he told controllers of his instrument losses and the time contact was lost completely. The body of the plane hit the ground, crumpling the propeller and turbine engine, and smashing the cockpit. Given the state of the wreckage, Tsuji said, there was no chance of survival for anyone on board.

[Continue reading]

Popularity: 22% [?]