McDuffie County, GA (WFXG) -
It's
day two of the investigation into the deadly plane crash that killed five
passengers. The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed Friday the two
surviving people on board were the pilots of the plane.
"Anytime
you do have surviving pilots, that does provide you with a first-hand account
of what they recall from happening," said Robert Sumwalt, NTSB board member. "Sometimes they don't recall what happened.
But that gives us hope right there that we will get some good information from
them."
The
NTSB is still searching for a voice recorder from the cockpit of the plane.
Right now they say they're using video from the Thomson-McDuffie Regional
Airport to determine whether or not the plane touched down on the runway –
before the pilots aborted the landing.
"I'd
have to say that the granularity of the video, it is grainy, and it's dark,
because of course the accident happened at dark," Sumwalt said.
About
a half a mile from the airport, the plane hit a 60 food utility pole clipping
its left wing. That wing began leaking fuel, caught fire, then the plane crashed
into the woods. Now, the Federal Aviation Administration and the manufacturer
of the Beech Craft 390 is helping NTSB with their investigation. They'll be
looking for abnormal tire marks, and debris; they'll review voice
communications and radar data from Air Traffic Control, as they try to piece
together, how the plane went down.
"Our whole purpose for
being here, is to find out what happened, so we can keep it from happening
again," Sumwalt said.
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