More than three days after a private jet crashed at the Bangor International Airport, killing six people, questions remain about what happened on board the plane as a snowstorm began Sunday night.
It’ll likely be another year or more until the National Transportation Safety board completes its investigation into the crash and uncovers what caused it, according to airport spokesperson Aimee Thibodeau.
But many have questioned why the plane took off Sunday night as a winter storm descended on the East Coast, and whether there were any systems in place to stop it from doing so. It’s up to a plane’s pilot-in-command to make that decision, according to an aviation safety expert and Federal Aviation Administration documents.
“It’s ultimately up to that captain if he’s going to take off or not,” said Randy Klatt, a former U.S. Navy pilot and aviation safety officer who’s on the advisory board for the Foundation for Aviation Safety.
The person briefing a pilot about weather conditions might recommend against flying, but “the final decision as to whether the flight can be conducted safely rests solely with the pilot,” according to the FAA’s Aeronautical Information Manual.
Just before Sunday’s crash, an Allegiant Airlines crew scheduled to depart from Bangor decided to turn back to the gate, citing de-icing issues and low visibility, according to air traffic control recordings.
Different types of planes have their own minimum weather conditions for takeoff, Klatt said. Sunday night, conditions were such that it was legal to take off, he added, but it’s still a judgment call for the pilot.
The plane model that crashed Sunday, a Bombardier Challenger 600, has a history of failing during winter weather conditions, and in multiple other instances has crashed due to issues with the de-icing process.
Typically, if the weather is so bad that an airport decides to close, all the planes there would already be below the minimum requirements for takeoff, so they wouldn’t be departing anyway, he said.
“The runway was clear and deemed safe to operate … there were aircraft taking off and landing just prior to that,” Airport Director Jose Saavedra said Wednesday when asked about who would make the call to close the airport in bad weather conditions.
Thibodeau was unable to answer questions about what criteria the Bangor airport would use if it decided to close and how often that happens by time of publication.
NTSB investigators will look at information including aircraft maintenance records, weather conditions and the pilot’s license and 72-hour background to learn more about the crash, according to Thibodeau.
Pilots on both private and commercial flights face a pressure to get where they’re supposed to go — a tendency that pilots call “get-home-itis” — whether it’s imposed by themselves, their company or their passengers, according to Klatt.
“These things just shouldn’t happen. We have systems in place to prevent it, but unfortunately, we are all people and things happen, and hopefully we can learn from it,” he said of Sunday’s crash.