Authorities Investigating After Plane Crash Leaves 3 Dead

(IntegrityPress.org) – A small plane owned by a flight school in Northwestern Massachusetts crashed on Sunday, January 14, killing three people on board. The victims include the flight instructor, William Hampton, who was 68 years old, Chad Davidson, a 29-year-old student pilot, and Frederika Ballard, 53, who owned the flight school (Fly Lugu). The flight took off from Barnes Airport in Westfield at approximately 11 AM.

A thorough joint investigation of the crash is being conducted by The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This involves examination of the wreckage, flight data reviews, looking over the communication records of the flight, as well as getting information on the backgrounds of the pilots, their recent flight experiences, and also the aircraft’s maintenance history. The NTSB has issued a plea for people who might know relevant information, including witness accounts or surveillance footage, to contribute to the ongoing investigation.

The incident shows that although commercial flying is extremely safe across the board, private flying is inherently riskier, and incidents like this prove there might need to be extra safety precuations for recreational flying. The NTSB’s final report, which should be out in a year or two, aims to pin down the probable cause and contributing factors behind the crash. This report is crucial for preventing similar incidents in the future as well.

Federal, state, and local authorities are all involved in investigating the crash site and the circumstances of the crash itself. Interestingly, the size of the investigation is larger than usual for a crash from a smaller plane.

The NTSB and FAA have said that they are committed to delivering a detailed account of the crash, as aforementioned. As the investigation progresses, both the local aviation community in Massachusetts and the families of the victims, and the public, will have to wait for conclusive findings to see what happened onboard that caused the crash.