A charter plane owned and operated by Security Aviation crashed near the Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site in remote Southwest Alaska on Thursday, Aug. 20, killing all eight people on board after a second landing attempt.
The crash turned a routine flight into a fatal accident in a place where weather and distance can complicate even a normal arrival. The Cessna 441 Conquest left Anchorage at 9:15 a.m. and went down about 11:45 a.m. after Anchorage Center lost contact following the second missed approach.
Clint Johnson, speaking for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the pilots were navigating solely by instruments and could not see the ground. He said the wreckage was found a third to a quarter-mile west of the runway, in an area of rising terrain, and that there was a post-crash fire. The flight had 2 pilots and 6 passengers, including 2 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employees and 4 contractors.
The weather added a layer of contradiction that investigators will have to sort through. Fog was reported in the Cape Newenham area earlier that morning and again later in the evening, but conditions were clear around noon with winds up to about 15 mph, the window when the aircraft was attempting to land. That leaves the central question of the case unanswered: why the plane missed twice and then crashed after contact was lost.
Johnson said the NTSB is trying to get a 4-to-6-member team to Cape Newenham despite the remoteness of the site and the weather challenges. The agency also plans to review the radar data from the site, while the Federal Aviation Administration and Security Aviation are part of the investigation team. Security Aviation said it is grieving the loss, and the Army Corps and investigators now face the task of piecing together the final minutes of a flight that ended in fire on a remote runway approach.
