Illinois Plane Crash Kills Two

Wheeling, ILJust a few days into the New Year, an airplane crash took the lives of two people and destroyed the plane itself. Officials investigating the accident found two bodies amidst a wide debris field, although there was expected to be a delay in removing them.

On January 6 the Chicago Tribune reported that the Learjet 35A had been making a cargo run from suburban Detroit enroute to Wheeling, Illinois, where the aircraft was scheduled to pick up additional cargo for an eventual air ferry to Atlanta. According to reports, the plane had been cleared to land at Wheeling's Chicago Executive Airport when it crashed into the Cook County forest preserve, about a mile from the airport, at 1:30 pm on January 5.

The plane was owned by Royal Air Charter of Waterford, Michigan. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was called in to investigate the crash and has indicated that it would focus its investigation on the plane.

The identities of the victims were not released, although a spokesperson at the airport where the plane was based suggested to the Tribune that the two pilots were experienced with the Learjet plane they were commanding.

A veteran commercial pilot who flew into Chicago Executive Airport shortly after the plane accident told the Tribune that, in his view, the airplane crash showed classic signs of a stall—an aviation term used to describe the loss of lift, which keeps a plane in the air. "When they go in nose down, that's a classic stall spin. There's almost no other option," Robert Mark said.

Due to winds coming out of the west-northwest on January 5, the pilots were required to approach the airport in a circling pattern, a more complex maneuver than a straight descent onto the runway. If the crash was in fact caused by a stall, it could have occurred as the plane circled to make its final approach to the runway.

The Tribune referred to NTSB records that suggest that Royal Air suffered a prior fatal crash. In March 2004 a twin-engine plane ferrying cargo crashed en route to Maine. The pilot was reported to have lost control of the aircraft, but investigators could not determine why.

In 1999 the company agreed to pay a $250,000 fine for various record-keeping and maintenance violations.