CHAMBERLAIN, S.D. (KELO.com) — Federal and State investigators are now at the scene of a plane crash near Chamberlain that killed nine people and injured three.
The wreckage is in a snow-covered cornfield less than a mile from the Chamberlain Municipal Airport.
The National Transportation Safety Board has released some preliminary information on Saturday’s crash.
From the NTSB press release:
The pilot and passengers arrived in Chamberlain on Friday, Nov. 29 at about 9:30 a.m. CST for an annual pheasant hunting trip. Shortly after arrival, the pilot purchased 150 gallons of Jet A fuel from an automated fuel pump. The airplane remained parked on the airport ramp until the accident flight on Nov. 30.
The pilot filed an instrument flight rules plan with the Federal Aviation Administration and received a clearance to fly direct from Chamberlain, a non-towered airport, to Idaho Falls, Idaho, with a planned departure time of 12:20 p.m. CST. The plane departed Chamberlain at 12:26 p.m. CST. When the pilot did not activate the flight plan after departure, the FAA issued an alert for a missing airplane.
At 12:35 p.m. CST, an AWOS-3 automated weather observation station at the Chamberlain airport recorded weather as follows: winds from 020 degrees (north/northeast) at 6 knots (7 mph), ½ mile visibility with moderate snow and icing, low-level windshear, and clear air turbulence conditions with overcast skies. The base of the cloud layer was recorded at 500 feet above the ground.
The airplane departed on runway 31 and crashed in a field about 1 mile north of the airport. The Pilatus PC-12 airplane is not required to be equipped with a cockpit voice recorder or a flight data recorder. Investigators will be looking for any avionics or engine monitoring equipment with non-volatile memory that could yield information relevant to the investigation.
The airplane was equipped with an automated dependent surveillance broadcast system (ADS-B), which records parameters that will help investigators determine the performance of the airplane by evaluating the flight track, altitude and speed from takeoff to the end of the flight.
Federal investigators are expected to complete their on-site work by the weekend.
