WASHINGTON -- Federal investigators Thursday blamed the fatal crash of cargo jet near Toledo Express Airport Feb. 15 on a combination of pilot error and possible equipment failure.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the crash of a Burlington Air Express on a scheduled flight from Seattle to Burlington's Toledo, Ohio, hub was caused by the crew's failure to respond to the plane's position.
Four people aboard died instantly when the airplane crashed into a vacant field after making two unsuccessful attempts to land in a light rain at 3:26 a.m.
But how the airplane went into a roll and struck the ground puzzled NTSB investigator John Lauber.
While no conclusive evidence pointed to the fact, Lauber said he felt that more than pilot effor was involved in the crash.
'I understand that the hard evidence is not there,' Lauber said. 'But I just have this concern that the result is not consistent with the performance of that these kinds of aviators would normnaly turn in.'
Lauber said the investigation failed to turn up evidence pointing to an equipment malfunction that would have misled the crew into mistaking their position.
'Maybe that's the best we can do. It's troubling,' he said.
After aborting the second landing, the DC-8 had banked left and dived into a field.
The NTSB said the probable cause was 'the failure of the crew to properly recognize or recover in a timely manner from the unusual aircraft attitude that resulted from the captain's apparent spatial disorientation resulting from either physiological factors and-or the failure of the atttitude direction indicator.'
The plane's left wing touched ground first. Investigators said the three crew members and a passenger were killed instantly.
The cargo of computer and aircraft parts and manuals as well as pieces of the aircraft itself were scattered throughout the field, three miles northwest of the airport. No one on the ground was hurt.
Investigators also said that for a moment preceding the crash, neither the pilot, Captain Harry Baker of Orange Park, Fla., nor the first officer, Tim Hupp of Fairborn, Ohio, had control of the four- engine aircraft.
Hupp was flying the plane upon arrival at Toledo.
'For undetermined reasons, he failed to properly capture the ILS localizer (a radio beacon used for instrument landings) and-or glideslope during two ILS approaches,' the report said.
The captain assumed control during the second missed approach, but the report said he apparently became disoriented and allowed 'an unusual attitude to develop with bank angles up to 80 degrees and pitch attitudes to minus 28 degrees.'
The report said Baker transferred control back to Hupp 'when the nose was low and in a left bank angle, however there may have been a short period of time when neither pilot was in control.'
Hupp began leveling the wings and raising the nose of the airplane, but the impact with the ground occurred before the unusual attitude recovery was completed.'
A transcript of the pilot's conversations released in April offered no conclusions as to the cause.
Also killed was flight engineer Jose Montalbo of Ypsilanti, Mich., and Ramon Papel, of Washington State.
Air Transport operated Flight 805 for Burlington, which is headquartered in Irvine, Calif. Papel was a pilot for Buffalo Airways, which also operates cargo flights for Burlington. He had caught a ride aboard the ill-fated plane.
