Date: 8/1/2008 6:07 AM
By AMY FORLITI
Associated Press Writer
OWATONNA, Minnesota (AP) _ U.S. investigators planned Friday to search the wreckage of a small plane for clues to why it crashed near a regional airport, killing all eight people on board.
The victims included two pilots and six passengers, all casino and construction executives who were heading to Owatonna, Minnesota, for a business meeting.
The Raytheon Hawker 800 went down Thursday morning, shortly after severe weather had moved through southern Minnesota. The weather conditions, as well as the plane’s structure, its systems and other factors, are being examined by the National Transportation and Safety Board, said John Lovell, the investigator in charge.
A cockpit voice recorder and a flight management system were recovered and sent to the NTSB lab in Washington to be analyzed.
The charter jet, flying from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Owatonna, a town of 25,000, went down in a cornfield northwest of Degner Regional Airport, Sheriff Gary Ringhofer said. The wreckage was not visible from the airport, and roadways leading to the site were blocked off.
Debris was scattered 500 feet (150 meters) beyond the airport’s runway. Late Thursday, the Dakota County coroner was on the scene working to identify victims.
Seven people were found dead at the crash site. One died later at a hospital.
Two other people who were supposed to be on board did not get on the flight, said Doug Neville, Department of Public Safety spokesman.
By late Thursday night, five of the victims had been identified. Revel casino spokeswoman Valerie Edmonds said three employees were killed in the crash, but said their identities would not be released until Friday at the earliest.
The airport Web site describes it as “ideal for all classes of corporate aircraft use” with an all-weather instrument landing system.
Neville said the airport has no control tower, and pilots communicate with controllers in Minneapolis.
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Associated Press writer Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, New Jersey contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.