An Amazon.com executive and a Great Lakes Air pilot were killed when their plane went down Saturday
Plane crash kills two in St. Ignace
ST. IGNACE, MI -- Federal investigators have started the investigation into an airplane crash that killed two men Saturday night St. Ignace.
Monday, investigators were salvaging the wreckage to try to determine exactly what went wrong.
The severed plane was pulled out of the densely wooded area piece by piece as the investigation into what exactly went wrong Saturday night continued Monday morning. Great Lakes Air pilot, 29 year-old Joseph Pann, Jr., and 52 year-old Thomas Phillips, an Amazon.com executive from Seattle, were killed when their plane crashed about a mile north of the St. Ignace airport.
"Right now, we're concentrating on the airplane. There’s not a whole lot I can do with where it's at. It’s in a heavily wooded area, very boggy area, it's damaged, the wings are scattered off in several different pieces as it went through the trees," explained Pam Sullivan, NTSB Senior Air Safety Investigator.
The men took off in a Piper Saratoga plane from the St. Ignace airport around eight Saturday night. Pann, who has been a pilot with Great Lakes Air for about a year, was flying Phillips to his home on Mackinac Island, a trip that typically takes only six minutes. A concerned family member on the island called police a couple hours after the men didn't show and it took about 12 hours until the Coast Guard found the wreckage after intercepting an emergency locator signal. The plane crashed 100 yards from Lake Huron.
“We want to look at it to see if there were any failures or malfunctions, was it sound, was it working the way it was supposed to, and it takes tools and it takes manpower to be able to do that," said Sullivan.
There's no word on what caused the crash. The weather on Saturday night reported from the airport at Mackinac Island reported fog, mist, and visibility at five miles.
NTSB investigators tell me they expect to have a preliminary report of the investigation available sometime next week. The full investigation could take up to 6 months or a year.
