Stall Warning Preceded Gaithersburg Plane Crash: Official

»National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Robert Sumwalt briefs reporters on a fatal plane crash in Gaithersburg. Screenshot from WUSA TV.

________

About 20 seconds before a private jet nose-dived into a Gaithersburg house killing six people, an automated stall warning sounded in the aircraft’s cockpit as its nose pitched up and down, and the plane rolled from side to side, a federal aviation expert says.

Early indications show no signs of engine failure, in-flight fire, and no birds damaging the plane’s engines before the Monday crash that killed three people in the plane and a mother and her two young sons in their home.

The twin-engine plane, an Embraer EMB-500/Phenom 100, flew from Chapel Hill, NC, to Maryland, and was less than a mile from the Montgomery County Airpark.

At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, spokesman Robert Sumwalt of the National Transportation Safety Board told reporters that the jet’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder worked until the time of the crash. The devices give investigators a wealth of data to study in coming months as they try to determined what caused the deadly mishap.

“Today is not the day we’re here to solve the accident,” Sumwalt said. “We’re here to conduct fact finding.”

Sumwalt emphasized that the early evidence shows the jet’s engines were working normally. The stall warning didn’t refer to an engine stoppage he said, but rather that the plane’s speed was too slow to sustain the lift needed for the flight.

The plane’s occupants have tentatively been identified by Montgomery County Police as pilot Michael Rosenberg, 66; David Hartman, 52; and Chijioke Ogbuka, 31, all of Raleigh, NC. Identifications will be confirmed after autopsies have been completed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Authorities also confirmed the family members killed when a fuel-filled portion of the jet slammed into their home as Marie Gemmell, 36, and her sons, Cole, 3, and Devin, 1 ½ months.

Montgomery Police Capt. Darren Francke said the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore ruled the Gemmells’ deaths as accidental from smoke inhalation, reports Montgomery Community Media.

The automated stall warning callout continued until the end of recording, Sumwalt said, to announce an impending aerodynamic stall, not a stall of the engines. Two seconds after the stall warnings sound the throttles advances and the engines responded, investigators say.

The flight data recorder showed the plane as configured for landing with its flaps down and landing gear down prior to the crash. Throughout the flight the engines responded to all commands, Sumwalt said.

Investigators have found nose, wingtips and tail of the plane at the accident site, which means the plane was intact until impact.

Rosenberg, the pilot, had 4,500 flight hours and was rated for the plane. He was involved in a March 2010 plane crash.

See also:

• Passenger Identified in Plane Crash; Investigation Continues
• Mom, Two Children Die When Plane Hits Their House
• Death of Mom, Sons in Plane Crash Sends Shockwaves Through Community
• UPDATE: 6 Dead After Plane Crashes into Gaithersburg House: Reports