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April 29, 2008

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Anonymous The Joplin Globe Tue Apr 29, 2008, 08:53 AM CDT

From staff reports

news@joplinglobe.com

MIAMI, Okla. — Bryan Moore was at work Monday afternoon at Northeastern Tribal Health System when he heard a shrill, whining noise, like that of a radio-controlled plane, and looked up.

He saw an actual white turboprop airplane tumbling out of control in the sky over the Miami exit of the Will Rogers Turnpike.

“It was just sitting there at 500 to 600 feet,” Moore recalled in a phone interview with the Globe. “It was spinning around. It did an end-over-end. It did a loop. It hung there like it stalled, and then it just fell propeller forward.”

The plane nearly hit an overpass, Moore said, before crashing into the highway and sending a plume of fire 50 to 60 feet into the air.

Moore said he then called 911. It was 2:12 p.m., he said.

“There was just a tremendous amount of black smoke,” he said. “It was horrible.”

Authorities later Monday afternoon began the search for answers to why the plane, identified as a single-engine, turboprop Turbine Legend model, crashed in a westbound lane of Interstate 44, just west of the Miami exit.

The pilot — the plane’s lone occupant — was killed in the crash, according to Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board. No injuries were reported on the ground.

Information about the plane’s origin and destination was unavailable from local or federal authorities.

Knudson said he did not have any information about the pilot’s name. That information is released by local authorities, he said.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol was withholding the name of the pilot pending notification of relatives. Efforts to reach the Ottawa County coroner were unsuccessful early Monday night.

Investigators had just begun their probe, and the NTSB would not issue its findings until after that probe was complete, Knudson said. Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration, which will be helping the NTSB with its probe, will be dispatched to the crash area.

There was no answer Monday night when the Globe called a phone number listed for Tromsness Enterprises Inc., of Quapaw, which authorities said was listed as owner of the aircraft.

For at least part of Monday, the westbound lanes of the Will Rogers Turnpike around Exit 313 were shut down, and traffic was diverted.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said the crash was reported about 2:15 p.m.

Capt. Ronnie Ross, of the Miami Fire Department, said his department responded to the scene, and that it took fire crews 10 to 15 minutes to extinguish the burning plane. He said the plane was burned so badly that its markings could not be distinguished. He said the plane ended up at the highway divider wall, with debris scattered across both sides of the interstate.

Ross said an ambulance crew was the first to arrive, and that nine firemen responded in three engines and three other vehicles.

Eyewitnesses told authorities that the plane passed low over motels and a business alongside the interstate.

The crash site is about one-fourth of a mile from where Bill Bunch, a Miami firefighter, suffered serious injuries when he fell off an overpass while fighting a fire in November 2006.

Bunch had returned home Monday afternoon from a hospital in Austin, Texas. Initially, there were concerns that the plane that carried Bunch had crashed on its return.

Bunch’s sister, Ronda O’Brien, of Grove, said there had been a welcome event at the airport, and one fire crew and one ambulance crew had accompanied her brother to his home.

“They were just getting him settled in when they got the call about the plane crash,” she said. “They left from there. We’re so sorry that it happened.”

Metro Editor Andy Ostmeyer, and staff writers Susan Redden, Greg Grisolano and Derek Spellman contributed to this report.

Owner of plane

The owner of the plane is listed as Tromsness Enterprises Inc., of Quapaw, according to online records from the Federal Aviation Administration. Tromsness Enterprises also is listed as the craft’s manufacturer.