Retired NASCAR driver\u00a0Greg Biffle\u00a0was not flying his own jet when it crashed last month, killing him and six others, according to a Friday report from federal safety officials who also concluded that while an experienced pilot was at the controls, no one else on board was qualified to be the required copilot.<\/p>\n
The preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board said that Biffle and the retired airline pilot at the controls, Dennis Dutton, and his son Jack, who were all licensed pilots, noticed problems with gauges malfunctioning on the Cessna C550 before it\u00a0crashed while trying to return\u00a0to the Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
The plane erupted into a large fire when it hit the ground about a third of a mile (550 meters) from the airport\u2019s runway.<\/p>\n
The NTSB made clear that Jack Dutton was sitting in the copilot seat. Neither Jack Dutton nor Biffle had the right endorsement on their pilot\u2019s licenses to serve as a copilot on that plane. Aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti, who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration, said he believes the lack of an experienced copilot may have been a key factor in the crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis airplane requires two trained pilots, and if things go wrong and you don\u2019t have a trained pilot, then bad things can happen,” Guzzetti said. \u201cThe airplane might have been able to be landed safely if there were two qualified pilots up front.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report said that a thrust reverser indicator light wasn\u2019t working before takeoff, but after the plane got into the air, the pilot\u2019s altimeter and some other instruments weren\u2019t working.<\/p>\n
The nature of the problems with the plane isn\u2019t clear at this stage in the investigation, partly because the cockpit voice recorder cut out at times and NTSB experts have only just begun to dig into what caused the crash. Over the radio, Jack Dutton announced, \u201cwe\u2019re having some problems here\u201d and the cockpit recorder captured part of the conversation between the three pilots about the issues with the plane.<\/p>\n
But the report indicates that the pilots were able to resolve the problems with the gauges before they tried to land back at the airport. It’s not clear why the plane came in so low and slow.<\/p>\n
Biffle\u2019s wife, Cristina, and children Ryder, 5, and Emma, 14, were killed in the crash along with his friend, Craig Wadsworth.<\/p>\n
Biffle, 55, won more than 50 races across NASCAR\u2019s three circuits, including 19 at the Cup Series level. He also won the Trucks Series championship in 2000 and the Xfinity Series title in 2002.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Biffle was honored for his humanitarian efforts after Hurricane Helene struck the U.S., even using his personal helicopter to deliver aid to flooded, remote western North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people in the NASCAR community\u00a0gathered at an arena\u00a0in Charlotte earlier this month to honour Biffle at a public memorial service.<\/p>\n
The jet had departed Statesville Regional Airport, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Charlotte about 10 minutes before it\u00a0crashed\u00a0while trying to return and land. Every indication is that the plane needed to land quickly because of the problems, so it wouldn’t have been a good option to fly to Charlotte.<\/p>\n
The plane\u2019s speed and altitude fluctuated significantly during the brief flight. At one point, the plane quickly soared from 1,800 feet (550 meters) up to 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) before descending again. Just before the crash, it was only a couple of hundred feet off the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Retired NASCAR driver\u00a0Greg Biffle\u00a0was not flying his own jet when it crashed last month, killing him and six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-443943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}