The pilots of a Cessna Citation 560 that crashed on final approach to Pueblo’s airport Feb. 16 were trying to shed ice collecting on the airplane as they descended in the final minutes before the accident, according to records released Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The crash, which occurred around 9:13 a.m. 4 miles east of the runway, killed the two pilots and all six passengers aboard the twin-engine business jet.
The plane was owned by Circuit City Stores, the electronics retailer, and the contract pilots were ferrying company officials on a cross-country business trip from Circuit City’s Richmond, Va., headquarters to Santa Ana, Calif.
The plane was flying just ahead of a sister Circuit City aircraft, another Citation that also had two pilots and six passengers aboard.
Both planes had refueled in Columbia, Mo., on the journey west and both were to make a second refueling stop in Pueblo. The sister airplane made a safe landing at Pueblo minutes after the first plane crashed.
The NTSB released more than 450 pages of documents related to the Pueblo accident on Friday but did not identify a probable cause of the accident.
A transcript of voice conversations between the two pilots shows the flight crew was aware of the ice building on plane surfaces in the minutes before the crash.
“It’s building a little bit right on the leading edge,” one pilot tells the other around 8:55 a.m., 18 minutes before the crash. “It’s not the real white ice like we had yesterday. It’s more of a grayish. … There’s a real thin line back there.”
The pilots turn on anti-ice equipment that works at melting or breaking away the collected ice.
They further discuss the ice buildup: “The descent accumulation comes a little bit different than the climb accumulation,” one says.
Less than four minutes before the crash, he adds: “You got a little different ice on there now. It’s clear.”
In one of the NTSB’s reports on weather conditions at the time of the accident, a National Center for Atmospheric Research official estimated that the Citation may have experienced ice buildup up to 4 millimeters, or 0.157 inches, on the leading edge of the wings.
“An accumulation of 4 millimeters in four minutes would approach severe icing conditions,” the report said.
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or at jleib@denverpost.com
