Pilots of the chartered jet that crashed while taking off from the Montrose airport 14 months ago had discussed whether the wings were clear of precipitation in the minutes before they started down the runway.
The accident killed the plane’s captain, the sole flight attendant and 14-year-old Teddy Ebersol, son of NBC executive Dick Ebersol and actress Susan Saint James. Ebersol, another son, Charlie, and the plane’s co-pilot were injured in the accident, which occurred in intermittent light snow about 10 a.m. on Nov. 28, 2004.
“How do you see the wings?” captain Luis Polanco asked the first officer, according to cockpit conversations released by federal safety investigators Thursday. “Good,” replied first officer Eric Wicksell.
“Looks clear to me,” added Polanco, 50.
The transcript was among 175 pages of crash-related documents released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board. Officials have not identified the probable cause of the accident and did not comment on the documents.
Ebersol told the NTSB that he saw “chunks of slush” sliding down from the roof and windows of the plane as it taxied for takeoff.
A lawyer hired by Polanco’s family said the Canadian manufacturer of the Challenger 601 Bombardier Aerospace knew of the danger of taking off with ice or frost on wings since a fatal Challenger accident in Birmingham, England, in January 2002.
“It is absolutely clear that the manufacturer of this aircraft bears substantial, if not complete, responsibility for this crash,” said attorney Brian Alexander.
After the Montrose crash, the Federal Aviation Administration and the manufacturer directed pilots to carefully inspect the aircraft’s wings for snow, ice and slush. In February 2005, the FAA issued a bulletin on Challenger jets “to prevent possible loss of control on take-off resulting from even small amounts of frost, ice, snow or slush on the wing.”
Ebersol and Saint James had spent the weekend in California with their sons: Charlie, then 21, a student at the University of Notre Dame; Willie, then 18, a freshman at the University of Southern California; and Teddy.
The plane stopped at Montrose, where Saint James left to drive to their house in Telluride. Ebersol planned to drop Charlie in South Bend, Ind., then return to Connecticut with Teddy.
Ebersol told Oprah Winfrey on Thursday that his son Charlie dragged him from the crashed plane.
People at the scene told Charlie, “‘Don’t go back into the plane,”‘ Ebersol said. “He ran back in.”
He found his father when he spotted a “white tuft of hair” sticking through the wreckage of the plane’s kitchen galley, which had collapsed on Ebersol, and he pulled him out.
Charlie couldn’t find Teddy because his brother had been thrown from the plane and was beneath the wreckage.
He recalled the terror and frustration of trying to find his family through a cloud of smoke.
“It is one of those moments,” Charlie told Winfrey. “They say it lasted 15 seconds – it was hours.”
Charlie broke his back in two places, broke six bones in his hand, had third-degree burns on an arm and ruptured an eye. Ebersol broke several vertebrae, his pelvis, sternum and three ribs.
The accident killed flight attendant Warren Richardson III, 36, and seriously injured co-pilot Wicksell, 30.
In the documents the NTSB released Thursday, a company that performs safety audits of air-charter companies said Polanco and Wicksell did not meet the firm’s standard for pilot experience.
Wyvern Consulting Ltd. had previously performed a safety audit of Air Castle Corp., the Challenger’s operator, and after the accident reported Polanco had not accumulated at least 75 flight hours in the 90 days prior to the accident and at least 300 hours in the previous 12 months, as required to meet Wyvern’s widely accepted safety standard for a pilot-in-command.
Polanco had piloted a flight to Nice, France, four days before the accident. He returned to New Jersey on the evening of Nov. 26, and on Nov. 27 took a commercial flight to California before piloting the Ebersols on Nov. 28.
He “recognized jet-lag issues and tried to get rest,” an NTSB investigator said Polanco’s brother told him.
The records show Polanco and Wicksell assessing the Challenger’s weight in the minutes before takeoff and calculating that they needed 8,000 feet of runway. They intended to take off on Runway 17-35, a 10,000- foot-long strip, but snow-removal crews were on it.
They decided instead to use Runway 13-31, a 7,500-foot runway. The pilots made last- minute calculations to increase engine performance and stay within constraints of the shorter runway.
The Ebersols told investigators that the plane was barely off the ground when the wings dipped severely to the left, then right and back to the left again before crashing.
Dick Ebersol told Winfrey that on the plane, Teddy said: “Dad, I’m scared.” He wasn’t horribly frightened, Ebersol said, but the teen knew something was terribly wrong.
The family has been able to cope with Teddy’s death in part due to Saint James’ strength, Ebersol said.
Saint James made copies for family of an autobiography Teddy prepared for his eighth- grade Montessori assignment.
Charlie recalled a passage: “I know a member of my family would run into a burning building to save another member of my family,” Teddy had written.
“He is free,” Saint James told Winfrey. “I honestly believe that.”
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
