By David Abel and John R. Ellement
Boston Globe
 AP Photo/Robert Klein An FD chaplain says a prayer by the wreckage of an Angel Flight plane that crashed in Easton, Mass., Tuesday. Reports indicated that three people were killed. |
EASTON, Mass. — The plane carrying a cancer patient and his wife that crashed Tuesday was seen spinning at least twice as it dropped from the sky, its right wing hitting the ground first as it exploded, a federal investigator said yesterday.
Other witnesses told investigators that the four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza circled overhead before plunging to the ground. Another account described a sharp nosedive that ended on the blacktop near a Hannaford’s supermarket.
A team of federal and state investigators sifted through the charred debris yesterday, loading the wreckage onto a flatbed truck and hauling it to an undisclosed location for examination.
Robert and Donna Gregory of Riverhead, N.Y., and pilot Joe E. Baker of Brookfield, Conn., were killed in the crash. The Gregorys were traveling to Boston so Robert Gregory could get treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The flight was arranged by Angel Flight New England, a nonprofit that ferries needy passengers to medical treatment.
At a news conference at the crash site, an official from the National Transportation Safety Board, Timothy W. Monville, said the damage made it clear that the plane’s descent was alarmingly steep. The investigation at the scene will last several more days, but a final determination of the cause will not be completed for about nine months, he said.
“The goal today was to document the scene,” said Monville, a senior air safety investigator for the NTSB. “Nothing has jumped out, in terms of the investigation. It’s still early. We still have a lot to do over the course of two days.”
He said the FAA has identified another pilot flying in the area who may be able to provide details about the weather at the time the plane went down. Some witnesses described a cloud ceiling as low as 800 feet.
Traffic controllers spotted the plane, which left Tuesday morning from an airport in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., flying too low as it began its approach to Logan International Airport, Monville said.
When it was a half-mile from a radio beam that helps planes land at the airport, the Beechcraft was at 1,200 feet when it should have been at 3,000 feet, Monville said.
Flight Aware, a website that tracks aircraft, indicated that the plane made it just north of Route 128 before it looped back south to 495 and then north to Easton. When shown a graphic of the flight path, Monville declined to comment, saying he would wait for official data from the FAA. He said he found nothing unusual at the crash scene.
After reviewing a recording of the conversation between the pilot and air traffic controllers, Dave Pascoe, a pilot who flies a Beech Bonanza and runs an educational website that compiles such recordings, said there are several possible explanations for the crash.
He said the recording shows that the plane’s altitude problems began as the pilot flew off course on his approach to Runway 4R at Logan and tried to return to his flight path. “Possible reasons for this could include spatial disorientation, loss of a critical flight instrument, an external factor like severe wind gusts or wake turbulence, or simply pilot error,” said Pascoe, who runs LiveATC.net, which maintains an archive of such recordings.
Given witness accounts, he said, it is also possible the airplane stalled, causing the wings to suddenly lose lift.
“If not reacted to properly, [this] can cause a spin, which is an aggravated stall resulting in rotation about the center of gravity, wherein the aircraft follows a downward corkscrew path.”
At the scene yesterday morning, yellow caution tape cordoned off a quarter of the supermarket parking lot. The investigators also explored a wooded area across the street, where it appeared pieces of the plane had fallen.
Bouquets of brightly colored flowers had been left on the blacktop. Polina Ken, 49, knelt at the edge of the yellow tape and placed a white vase brimming with pink roses and white baby’s breath. The Mansfield woman stood up, paused silently in prayer, and made the sign of the cross.
“God bless him,” Ken said, referring to the pilot. “How many people can you find who have a good heart to help other people in this world?”
Andrew Ryan of the Globe staff contributed to this report.