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(A7) The National Transportation Safety Board on Friday released its preliminary report on last month’s New York plane crash that claimed the lives of two Jewish men, Binyamin Chafetz and Baruch Taub, from northeast Ohio, WKYC reports.
The single-engine aircraft went down in Westchester County on January 19 just minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Taub, the pilot, and Chafetz, a passenger on the plane, had been bound for Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights after attending a funeral in New York City.
The NTSB’s initial findings do not yet point to a specific cause, but do shed some more light on the moments leading up to the fatal accident and the aftermath. The first signs of trouble, the report said, apparently came roughly 15 minutes after the plane departed JFK, with Taub reporting “poor flight performance” and a “dead cylinder” from the engine of the Beechcraft A36.
At that time, Taub did not declare a flight emergency (despite being asked) and saw nothing wrong on the aircraft’s instruments, but did request permission to made an unscheduled landing at nearby Westchester County Airport in White Plains, the report notes.
Moments later, however, Taub did indeed declare an emergency, saying his oil pressure was dropping and that he couldn’t “see anything out here.”
The NTSB confirmed weather had put sight visibility at about one mile during that late afternoon, roughly the minimum of the standard set by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Air Traffic Control gave Taub permission to land at the airport around 5:27 p.m., but less than a minute later, radar contact was lost. Crews later found the wreckage — along with the bodies of both Taub and Chafetz — in a New York City-owned water supply area less than two miles short of the runway, with investigators saying the plane hit several trees before coming to a rest.
NTSB crews noted in the report that “fresh oil” was found on the bottom of the aircraft as well as the engine’s crankcase breather line, with a hole also found on the latter engine vent pipe in line with one of the cylinders.
There were also fractures and deformities on one of the connecting rods, but with the plane itself sustaining “substantial” damage, it cannot yet be confirmed if any of these issues came before or after the moment of impact.
The NTSB is still examining the engine, along with a pilot monitor, several electronic devices, and flight instruments, according to WKYC.
