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NTSB Releases Final Report On 2014 FlightSafety Crash

Deborah Shaar, file photo
/
KMUW

UPDATED Wednesday at 10:51 a.m.

An October 2014 plane crash at the former FlightSafety International Building in southwest Wichita was the result of the pilot's "inability to safely control the airplane in an emergency situation," the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

In a probable cause report into the crash, the agency said pilot Mark Goldstein, the only person on the plane, "did not follow the emergency procedures for an engine failure during takeoff" when he began his flight the morning of Oct. 30, 2014. Twenty-six seconds after taking off, Goldstein reported left engine failure and attempted an emergency landing. He crashed into the FlightSaftey building near what was then the Mid-Continent Airport. Goldstein was killed along with three people in the building. 

Original story:

The plane involved in an Oct. 30, 2014, crash in southwest Wichita was in the air just 26 seconds and never ascended higher than 120 feet before the pilot had to make an emergency landing, the National Transportation Safety Board says in its new report.

The agency released its findings into the deadly crash this week, more than a year after the twin-engine Beechcraft 200 Super King Air crashed into the FlightSafety International building near the then-Mid-Continent Airport.

The plane took off at 9:47 a.m. the morning of the crash; the pilot, Mark Goldstein, reported he had “lost the left engine” and declared an emergency landing at 9:48, according to the report. Goldstein, the sole person on the plane, was killed, as were three people inside the building. Six others were injured, four of them seriously.

Video surveillance captured the last nine seconds of the flight prior to the crash and show the plane entered “a shallow left turn, continued turning left, and then descended into a building.”

The NTSB report says a sound-spectrum analysis post-crash shows the left engine “was likely operating but producing low to moderate power.”

NTSB investigators say the plane underwent scheduled maintenance on Oct. 22, eight days before the crash, and minor discrepancies were found with the left throttle lever and cabin pressurization leak rate, though the NTSB notes there were no recorded discrepancies that “would have affected the operation or performance of the airplane.” A second maintenance test flight was performed on Oct. 27.

The full report can be found here.

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