American/Corporate Airlines Flight 5966

On October 19, 2004, a Jetstream 32 twin-engine turboprop was scheduled to fly from St. Louis to Kirksville, Missouri. The plane carried 13 passengers and two crew members.

According to newspaper reports, "The last communication from the Jetstream 32 plane indicated it was on a normal approach to Kirksville and there was no mention of any problems. Clipping treetops, the plane crashed on its belly and burst into flames. Victims, including the pilot and copilot, were found inside the blazing fuselage, some of them still in their seats." In all, 11 of the 13 passengers were fatally injured; two survivors received serious injuries.

One of the survivors, Dr. John Krogh, recounted the crash to CBS News and told how he and his assistant, Wendy Bonham, escaped the plane.

"The wing was gone, and I knew there was no way with a broken hip that I could do anything but pull myself out and let myself fall to the ground eight feet below," Krogh said.

"I drug myself away and then I— the cries and the thoughts of those good people just came to my mind and I thought ‘oh, gosh, is there anything I can do?’ I looked back at the plane and I saw what I guess was Wendy Bonham, my secretary, my helper. I saw her come tumbling out of that same hole head first and when she landed down below, there was fire there. So that’s the last I saw of her at that time. I thought since she had fallen into the flames, that she was a goner."

The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the accident "was the pilots’ failure to follow established procedures and properly conduct a non-precision instrument approach at night in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), including their descent below the minimum descent altitude (MDA) before required visual cues were available (which continued unmoderated until the airplane struck the trees), and their failure to adhere to the established division of duties between the flying and non-flying (monitoring) pilot."

The NTSB report also said that contributing to the accident "was the pilots’ failure to make standard callouts and the current Federal Aviation Regulations that allow pilots to descend below the MDA into a region in which safe obstacle clearance is not assured based upon seeing only the airport approach lights. The pilots’ unprofessional behavior during the flight and their fatigue likely contributed to their degraded performance."

Additional Resources:

• National Transportation Safety Board information for Flight 5966.
• BBC account of crash.
• CBS News tells of survivor’s escape.

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