The National Transportation Safety Board says a plane that crashed at the Soldotna airport more than a month ago, killing 10 people including two families from South Carolina, was flying without a Federal Aviation Administration flight plan.
In a long-awaited, one-paragraph preliminary report on the crash released late Wednesday, the NTSB says the de Havilland DHC-3 Otter operated by Rediske Air crashed on takeoff near the right side of runway 25 at about 11:20 a.m. July 7. The aircraft was headed to a Chinitna Bay lodge, about 90 miles southwest of the airport.
Company owner and pilot Willy Rediske died in the crash as did all nine passengers, from Greenville, S.C.: Milton and Kimberly Antonakos and their children Olivia, Anastacia and Mills, as well as Chris and Stacy McManus and their children Meghan and Connor.
"The 9 passengers and 1 commercial pilot were fatally injured and the airplane was destroyed by impact forces and postcrash fire," officials wrote in the report. "Visual meteorological conditions prevailed and no flight plan was filed for the flight."
The NTSB's chief Alaska investigator, Clint Johnson, says the aircraft had a Spidertracks tracking system installed, which provides real-time information on a plane's location via satellite. As an air carrier operating under Part 135 of the FAA's rules, Rediske Air may not have specifically filed a flight plan with the FAA, but would be required to have some sort of flight plan.
"A lot of times it's a company flight plan, so that will satisfy that," Johnson said.
The deaths in Soldotna came a day after the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 at the San Francisco airport, which left three people dead. The Alaska NTSB had sent investigator Brice Banning to that crash, but recalled him to the state to investigate the Soldotna crash; investigators from Washington, D.C. subsequently took over the case as a mass-casualty event.
During NTSB press conferences held in Anchorage following the crash, board member Earl Weener said that all of the Otter's wreckage had been recovered, including a total of five cellphones from the plane's occupants. No flight data or cockpit voice recorders were installed on the aircraft and there were no eyewitnesses to or video of the crash, leaving investigators examining the wreckage to determine factors such as the plane's weight and balance.
Johnson says that in-state investigators try to release preliminary reports within seven days of a crash. Officials at the NTSB in Washington, D.C. have said they were working to meet an internal deadline of 30 days after a crash.
Contact Chris Klint