One of the pilots on a small plane that crashed in the median of Interstate 684 in Greenwich in December had called air traffic controllers before the fatal crash and said the plane was losing its engine, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The agency has released its preliminary report on the Dec. 12 crash that killed a passenger on the plane and injured the pilot who was flying the aircraft.
State troopers responded to the highway, between exits 2 and 3, around 7:54 p.m. on that night after the plane crashed.
The NTSB’s preliminary report provides details on what happened before the crash.
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It says that the plane took off from Linden Airport in New Jersey around 6:09 p.m. and a pilot told air traffic control that they were heading for Albany, New York.
Then, at 6:26 p.m., one of the pilots said they wanted to divert to Westchester County Airport because they were losing their engine.
About a minute and a half after the call requesting to divert, one of the pilots said they switched fuel tanks and it looked like they got the engine back, the report says.
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But, one of the pilots said at 6:42 p.m. that they were losing the engine again and would head for runway 16 at Westchester County Airport.
Video surveillance from the airport showed the plane make a steep left turn and descend over I-684, climb quickly, then descend below the tree line, the report says.
A witnesses who was on the highway when the crash happened said he saw the plane, “fall very fast out of the sky and crash in the center median,” the report says.
Then he went to the crash site and was able to pull one person from the plane before Westchester County police arrived.
The NTSB said the initial examination of the engine did not reveal any evidence of catastrophic mechanical failure or malfunction.
The NTSB said the wreckage was retained for further examination and two personal electronic devices and two Garmin electronic flight displays with Secure Digital cards were retained for read-out at the NTSB’s Vehicle Recorders Division.
Connecticut state police identified the passenger who died in the plane crash as Jacob Yankele Friedman, 32 of Monsey, New York. He was a passenger in the plane and he died at the scene. The NTSB report says he was a commercial pilot.
The pilot, a 26-year-old resident of Linden, New Jersey, was taken to a hospital in New York to be treated for minor injuries.
NTSB issues the preliminary report for its ongoing investigation of the Dec. 12 crash of a Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecnam P2008 near Greenwich, Connecticut. Download the report PDF: https://t.co/9ImimEZZ6L
— NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) December 31, 2024
