NTSB confirms air crash details
3 died; agency says plane ‘in a near 90-degree bank angle’ near airport
A preliminary report posted Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board on the Dec. 1 plane crash near the San Antonio International Airport, which killed the pilot and two passengers but no one on the ground, disclosed little new information.
A three-paragraph narrative in the two-page report does confirm initial eyewitness accounts that the single-engine, four-seat Piper Comanche PA24-250 rapidly descended and was “in a near 90-degree bank angle before spiraling to the ground.”
The report said video camera footage — it doesn't mention the source — shows the airplane crashing “in a near vertical attitude” about 6:25 p.m. In good weather, with about 10 miles of visibility and light winds at the airport, the plane plummeted into a warehouse and residential area about 150 yards short of runway 13R (right) in the 600 block of West Rhapsody.
Killed were pilot Robert Tyson “Ty” Womble, 38, an Austinbased engineer and investor; Eric Naranjo, 22, of Sugar Land, a University
of Texas at San Antonio senior who was an intern at Womble's company, the Activum Group; and Maureen Garrow, 71, of Spring. In February, she had attained her second master flight instructor accreditation from the National Association of Flight Instructors.
NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said the agency's preliminary reports, which usually come out five to 10 days after a crash, state only the most basic facts that are known and rarely contain analysis or a “finding of responsibility.” Those are contained in the final report, which routinely takes one to two years to complete.
The plane was manufactured in the 1960s. The Piper Comanche
PA24 is a very common small plane in the United States, and there are hundreds of detailed crash reports involving that particular model on private aviation websites.
Tuesday's report confirmed that the airport cleared Womble's airplane to land on runway 13R after he reported “engine failure” to air traffic control. Womble's voice was calm as he requested a runway, saying he would “circle around” for Runway 4 and moments later choosing 13R in a conversation on streaming audio posted at LiveATC.net, a privately-run website.
The plane then dropped quickly — about 1,875 feet per minute, according to its last radar transmission. On the Aviation Safety
Network, a private website, a summary submitted by pilots says succinctly: “Appears the (pilot), without apparent power, reached the threshold of the runway too high, tried a 360 to lose altitude and came up short.”
The flight originated from Sugar Land Regional Airport, near Houston, at 5:15 p.m. and was headed for Grier Airport in Boerne. The report does not make clear Garrow's connection to Womble, but it does refer to her as “the” instructor, suggesting that the veteran instructor who had helped hundreds of Texas flight students may have been working for Womble when she was killed.