By Shereen Siewert | Wausau Pilot & Review
A fatal plane crash in 2021 that left three people dead was caused by the pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which caused the airplane to exceed its
critical angle of attack and enter an inadvertent stall and spin.
The information was released this month by the National Transportation Safety Board, in a final report.
The plane, a twin-engine Rockwell 690B, took off from Rhinelander-Oneida County Airport at 8:50 a.m. Sept. 28, 2021, heading northeast, according to publicly available flight logs. Just after 9 a.m., the airplane began to level off at an altitude of about 16,000 feet and accelerated in speed to about 209 knots. But the groundspeed decreased in a two-minute span to about 93 knots, and the airplane dropped about 500 feet.
NTSB officials say the airplane made a right turn with a rapid descent, and transmissions indicated “mayday” and “we’re in a spin” from the cockpit.
One witness, who was located about a mile from the site, reported that he heard a
“loud, strange sounding airplane.” He looked up and noticed an airplane “nose down at high rate of speed spinning about its longitudinal axis at about 30 to 60 rpm.” The witness lost sight of the airplane after it descended behind trees, and then he heard an impact.
The Rockwell International 690B aircraft was equipped with a Collins AP-106 Flight Control Systems autopilot.
The wreckage was located in remote woodlands and wooded terrain. The crash killed all three people on board: 28 year-old pilot Joseph Johnson of Florida, 28 year-old Mike Dickens, and 23 year-old Dominik Faciano, both from Missouri and who worked for Surdex Corporation.
Officials say no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures would have precluded normal operation of the plane. “An important but unknown factor before and during the initial stall was the behavior of the pilot regarding his flight control inputs, including his possible attempt to recover,” the NTSB report states.
