Copake, NY (AP) – Federal investigators describe the last moments of an airplane accident last month in New York which killed a family Massachusetts heading for Catskills to celebrate a birthday and Passover holidays.
The victims of the accident of April 12 in Copake, New York, included Karenna Groff, a former MIT football player named woman of the year of the NCAA 2022; his parents doctors, Dr. Michael Groff and Dr Joy Saini; His brother, Jared Groff, and his partner, Alexia Couyutas Duarte; And Karenna Groff's boyfriend James Santoro.
The National Transportation Safety Board, in a Preliminary report published Fridaysaid the private plane had left Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York, around 11:30 am to north of Columbia County Airport in Hudson.
Pilated by Michael Groff, the plane had left the suburbs of Boston early Saturday morning, picking up Karenna Groff and Santoro in White Plains before making the short trip to the Catskills to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Karenna Goff.
But around 11:57 a.m., Michael Groff informed the air traffic control that he had missed the initial approach to the County Airport track in Columbia, according to the report. The controller then gave him new instructions for landing, which Groff recognized shortly after 12 hours
About a minute later, however, the controller warned Groff that the plane was flying at low altitude, said the report. The pilot never responded and, despite several warnings, air traffic control received no other radio transmission from the plane until the radar contact is finally lost.
The Mitsubishi MU-2B-40 crashed in a land covered in snow at around 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the airport.
Investigators did not provide an exact cause of the accident in the preliminary report.
But they noted that all the main components of the plane found in a 150 -foot debris field and that no significant meteorological notice was in force in the region at the time of the accident.
NTTSB officials previously said that the sky conditions may have had an impact on the pilot's visibility and that an initial investigation had not addressed any problem with the plane.
