The probable cause of the November 2004 aircraft accident in Montrose that killed two crew members and one son of NBC executive Dick Ebersol was the pilots’ failure to ensure the wings were free of snow or ice before takeoff, air-safety investigators said Tuesday.
The chartered, twin-engine Challenger jet sat on the ground at the Montrose airport on the morning of Nov. 28 for 40 minutes in snowy, below-freezing weather before taking off on a trip that was to take Ebersol and his sons, Charlie and Teddy, to South Bend, Ind., according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
After accelerating down the runway, the plane lifted about 20 to 50 feet off the ground before rolling violently from side to side and plummeting nose first off the runway’s right side.
The fiery accident killed 14-year-old Teddy Ebersol, Challenger captain Luis Polanco and Warren Richardson III, the charter’s flight attendant.
The plane’s other occupants, co-pilot Eric Wicksell and Dick and Charlie Ebersol, survived but suffered serious injuries.
Ice or snow that accumulated while the plane was on the ground “resulted in an attempted takeoff with upper-wing contamination that induced the subsequent stall and collision with the ground,” the NTSB said. “A factor contributing to the accident was the pilots’ lack of experience flying during winter weather conditions.”
Deicing was available, but Polanco and Wicksell did not request it, and the pilots did not feel the wing surfaces for the presence of ice, the NTSB said.
A “clean airplane” – one with wing surfaces free of ice or snow – “should have climbed” out of Montrose that November morning, NTSB airplane-performance specialist Daniel Bower told the safety agency’s board members.
Bower said surface contamination reduces maximum lift generated by the wing and that “reductions of lift up to 30 percent are possible.”
In its report, the NTSB said Polanco, as captain, showed numerous deficiencies, including the failure to ensure a preflight “contamination inspection,” failure to deice and failure to insist on a proper crew briefing before takeoff.
Investigators faulted Wicksell for not challenging the captain’s decisions.
As part of the Montrose accident report, the NTSB said the Federal Aviation Administration should develop “visual and tactile training aids to accurately depict small amounts of upper wing surface contamination.”
“FAA should then require all commercial-airplane operators to incorporate these training aids into their initial and recurrent training,” the NTSB said.
The safety agency also recommended that federal transportation officials require customers of “air taxi” and charter flights to get more detailed information about aircraft owners and brokers involved in arranging flights.
On Tuesday, Ebersol said the charter company he had dealt with for many years switched the arrangements for his flight without telling him and “put us in the hands of pilots with no experience in winter weather.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
