Pilot was trying to return to airport when plane crashed on highway, NTSB says
By WBZ Staff
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Massachusetts (WBZ) — The pilot flying the small plane that crashed on a highway in Dartmouth, Massachusetts last month was trying to return to the airport, according to a preliminary report from the NTSB.
Tom Perkins, 68, and his 66-year-old wife, Agatha, of Middletown, Rhode Island, died when their single engine plane crashed onto Route 195 on October 13 and burst into flames.
According to investigators, shortly after taking off from New Bedford Airport for Kenosha, Wisconsin at 8:05 a.m., the pilot told air traffic control he would be returning to the airport, and that he did not need assistance. The pilot was cleared to land.
Low altitude alert About a minute later, the controller provided the pilot with a low altitude alert. “Shortly after, the pilot made an unintelligible exclamation. There were no further communications from the pilot,” the NTSB wrote in the report.
The crash site was about four miles southwest of the airport. The NTSB said several trees had the tops cut off approximately 50 feet above the ground. The fuselage of the plane came to rest in the median of the highway after hitting a car traveling on I-195 west. The driver of that car suffered minor injuries.
Investigators said the distance from the initial impact point to where the fuselage came to rest was about 280 feet. The NTSB said all of the major components of the airplane were located at the crash site.
Both sides of the highway in southeastern Massachusetts were shut down for several hours after the crash.
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