Saturday, June 13, 2015

25 years after mysterious plane crash killed six men, friends celebrate their lives: Cessna 210N, Professional Pilot Services, N6481N

A photo of the group on a fishing trip in Nags Head, N.C. taken May 9, 1990, the day before the plane crash. Six of the close friends never made it home. 
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On her wedding day, Sue Ann Richards played the music they had planned for the processional, as she sat, sobbing, on her groom’s grave.

It was the day after his funeral. His best man was dead, too.

Six friends — fun-loving, athletic, adventurous guys in their 30s — had crashed in a small plane. Ten of them had gone on an annual fishing trip to the Outer Banks, but only four made it home to Northern Virginia.

The search took a week and transfixed the Washington area, as family members camped out at a small airport in Manassas and hundreds of volunteers hiked through fields, woods and mountains of an enormous swath of rural Virginia, trying to find the six friends.

Twenty-five years later, some of those who loved them gathered this weekend to play golf, play cards and celebrate their lives.

A lot has changed since the May 1990 crash: Parents have died, couples have come together, children were born, grew up, went off to college. It is difficult to remember a time when a plane could be lost for so many days, when people would donate copy machines to help make paper maps for search parties, and a company would install a bank of pay phones at the airport so people could get news.

But some things did not change: The bonds between them are as tight as ever.

“We are all so interconnected,” said Lourine Cooney, who was 29 years old and three months pregnant when her then-new husband, Ronnie Wiencek, died.

When they get together, they tell stories about the six friends, how funny their lives were, how they were such crazy thrill-seekers. Wiencek used to often tell her that when he died, it was going to be big.

Richards had a bad feeling about the trip before her fiance, Alan David Weggeland, left.

She figured it was just ­pre-wedding jitters, but it bothered her enough, this idea in her head of a plane crashing in the dark in a storm, that she pleaded with him not to fly at night. She stayed up late to write a letter about how much she loved him.

She felt so sick when his plane took off that she canceled the last fitting of her ivory satin-and-lace wedding dress.

The friends did everything together — playing softball, basketball, sailing. If one of the guys got onto the boat with a stuffed parrot on a shoulder, an eye patch, a plastic knife gripped in his teeth, no one was surprised.

Wiencek, a contractor, was the glue; he led their softball team, he organized the annual fishing trip, he flew one of the two small planes they took. They snapped a photo the day before they left for home, 10 guys grinning in the sunshine on a dock, after a day of fishing and basketball played in flip-flops.

One of the friends drove home with all their golf clubs and the hundreds of pounds of tuna they’d caught. Two planes took off. They knew a storm was coming in, so they decided to fly at night to try to beat the bad weather. The plane flown by Steve Sisk touched down in Richmond to refuel and lost contact with the other Cessna.

The next morning, when Sisk and Wiencek’s wife realized only one plane had landed back in Virginia, their first thought was the guys might be pulling a pre-wedding prank, maybe spiriting Weggeland off to Atlantic City or something crazy.

But when Richards went to the airport to check whether the plane had taken off from Manteo, the look on the faces of the people who worked there told her everything: An alert was out. The flight was missing.

She tried to call Wiencek’s sister, Deb Rowan, and collapsed in a phone booth, hysterical.

The families of Wiencek, Weggeland, Jim Wolfe, R. David Day, William Lloyd Jr. and Doug DeBoer stayed at the airfield during the day, tying yellow ribbons around their wrists, some wearing the green shirts from the softball team.

So began a week of prayers, of deals Richards tried to make with God to get them home safely, of stories traded between families, of regular briefings in a giant tent at the airport, of possible pings from the transponder that kept turning out to be false leads.

There were organized efforts to find the plane, and volunteer efforts, covering nearly one-third of the state, near Lake Anna and the northern part of Shenandoah National Park. The Civil Air Patrol flew more than 10,000 miles. Student groups fanned out through fields. A group of motorcyclists combed through back roads. Rowan pleaded to people watching on television, “If you’re hearing this, and you’re north of Richmond, please search your land. Please search your farm.”


On Mother’s Day, with rain pouring down, they wished for the sons to be found. One evening, a group of the family members went to get something to eat and passed a small chapel. The door was open, and they went inside and prayed together.

Every night when Richards got home, she would find in the mail a couple more RSVPs for the wedding.

Then, the Virginia National Guard was deployed. But it was DeBoer’s brother Todd who found a piece of maroon-and-white metal deep in dense woods in Spotsylvania County southwest of Fredericksburg. Other volunteers went in.

In Manassas later that afternoon, an official said, “Your boys aren’t going to come home.” The tent filled with screams.

Some still thought, in the backs of their minds, the six friends, so young and strong, were off on some ad­ven­ture, maybe playing another practical joke. Rowan was so certain her brother was alive that she talked a friend into driving straight to the crash site and got lost for hours until they stumbled upon flashing lights from the emergency crews blazing in the night. A police officer turned her back, but the next day, two people from each family were allowed to go in.

“I’ll never forget the smell,” Richards said. “The smell of death was everywhere.”

Wiencek’s wife kept coming back, searching for his wedding ring. They never found it, but they found odd remnants: eyeglasses, a toothbrush, a plastic comb. A rescue worker told Richards that they found her letter to Weggeland.

More than a thousand people came to a memorial for the six men, listening to the song that was meant to be Richards’s first dance with her new husband: “What a Wonderful World.”

Then the funerals began.

Twenty-five years later, the six stones they laid at the airport that week, makeshift markers, are gone. Other memorials, such as charitable donations, remain, and continue. Some people thought of the friends as they gathered for drinks or dinner or golf this weekend; others remember them in their own way. Rowan thinks of her brother every day as she passes his favorite restaurant or his grave site by their mother’s house. Lourine Cooney, long since remarried and with two children, thinks of the baby girl she lost in pregnancy months after the crash. She named the girl Ronnie.


“Everyone thinks their loved one who died is special, their group of friends is special,” Richards said. “But we’ve lived 25 years and we’ve never come across a group of people like those guys were. The happy story is we’re all still friends. We all still love each other.”

She and Rowan are going to ask airport officials next week if they can add a memorial. They’d like to rename the Manassas airfield “Six Friends Airport.”

Source:  http://www.washingtonpost.com

NTSB Identification: BFO90FA045
The docket is stored on NTSB microfiche number 42810.
Accident occurred Thursday, May 10, 1990 in SHADY GROVE COR, VA
Probable Cause Approval Date: 09/05/1991
Aircraft: CESSNA 210N, registration: N6481N
Injuries: 6 Fatal.

NTSB investigators either traveled in support of this investigation or conducted a significant amount of investigative work without any travel, and used data obtained from various sources to prepare this aircraft accident report.

NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PLT WAS ON VFR FLT AT NGT FM MANTEO, NC TO WINCHESTER, VA. HE STARTED THE FLT EARLIER THAN ORIGIN- ALLY PLANNED AFTER LEARNING WX WAS FORECAST TO DETERIORATE. WHEN ACFT DID NOT ARR, SEARCH WAS INITIATED. IT WAS FND ON 5/17/91 IN REMOTE AREA NR SHADY GROVE CORNER, VA. INV REVEALED RGT WING SEPD IN FLT; WING WAS FND ABT 700' EAST OF WHEREACFT IMPACTED GND. MAIN WRECKAGE WAS FND WEST OF IMPACT POINT. METALLURGICAL EXAM SHOWED WING SEPD FM OVERLOAD. RCRDD RADIO INFO REVEALED PLT HAD ENCTRD RAIN. RADAR DATA REVEALED THAT BFR ACDNT, ACFT WAS HDG NE AT 2100' MSL. IT CLIMBED TO2400', TURNED NORTH, DSCNDD TO 2000' & TURNED WEST, THEN DSCNDD TO 1500' BFR RADAR CTC WAS LOST. RADAR CTC ENDED LESS THAN 1 MI FM CRASH SITE. ABT 29 MI ENE AT QUANTICO, 0255 EDT WX WAS IN PART: 1300' BKN, VIS 3 MI IN RAIN & FOG, WND FM 230 DEG AT 12 KTS. EXAM INDCD NO ROTATIONAL DMG OF DRCTNL GYRO OR TURN COORDINATOR GYRO, ONLY SLGT RUBBING OF ATTITUDE GYRO & NO SCORING OF VACUUM PUMP VANES, THOUGH ALL RCVD HVY IMPACT DMG & DIRT WAS PACKED IN VACUUM PUMP PORTS/CAVITY.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:
VFR FLIGHT BY THE NON-INSTUMENT RATED PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC), HIS LOSS OF AIRCRAFT CONTROL, DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION, AND HIS EXCEEDING THE DESIGN STRESS LIMITS OF THE AIRCRAFT, WHILE RECOVERING FROM AN UNCONTROLLED DESCENT. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: DARK NIGHT, ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, LOSS OF THE VACUUM SYSTEM, AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE.

Legal Spending at Martha's Vineyard Airport (KMVY) Sees Steep Climb



For the second year in a row, legal spending is sharply up at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport, due largely to the recently-concluded lawsuit with the county over control and authority at the Island’s only airport.

Meeting Thurdsay morning, the airport commission approved a $4.4 million supplemental budget for the current fiscal year, as well as a $4.6 million budget for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1.

The supplemental budget represents an increase of $529,559 over the original 2015 budget. Much of the increase — $175,000 — can be tracked to legal costs incurred in the court case with the Dukes County Commission. The case ended this week with a decision by a superior court judge strongly favoring the airport.

Unbudgeted increases also included repairs to the airport terminal and maintenance at the air field.

A majority of commissioners attending the meeting did not vote on the budget. Commissioners Christine Todd and Norm Perry voted to approve it. Commissioners Clarence (Trip) Barnes 3rd, Rich Michelson, vice-chairman Robert Rosenbaum and Beth Toomey abstained. The chairman, Myron Garfinkle, did not vote.

Last year the airport spent nearly 11 times the amount budgeted for legal fees, also due to court disputes with the county and a workplace dispute that remains unresolved. In 2014 the airport incurred approximately $271,191 in legal expenses; $25,000 was budgeted. A supplemental budget was also needed.

Also on Thursday, commissioners approved the budget for the coming fiscal year, though several members said they were uncomfortable with the short amount of time they have had to review it.

The 2016 budget will require a transfer of $717,168 from airport reserve funds.

“The transfers are almost three quarters of a million dollars,” said Mr. Rosenbaum. “That’s a lot of money. That basically means we are running at a three quarter million dollar deficit. The good news is the cash balance is slightly over $3 million, but that’s not the way to run a viable organization. That’s not sustainable,” he said.

Mr. Garfinkle urged commissioners to approve the budget with a caveat.

“We do have a responsibility to keep the airport running,” Mr. Garfinkle said. “I ask the commission to approve with the proviso that within 90 days, we come up with a supplemental budget which would reflect that we’ve had the opportunity to scrutinize the budget.”

Mr. Rosenbaum, Ms. Todd, Mr. Perry, Mr. Michelson, and Mr. Barnes voted to approve the budget. Ms. Toomey voted to abstain. Mr. Garfinkle did not vote.

Also at Thursday’s meeting, Mr. Garfinkle said he would like to schedule a meeting as soon as possible with county commission chairman Leon Brathwaite to discuss the recent court ruling involving the two commissions.

The ruling found that the state law that governs the airport trumps the law that created the county, especially in light of grant assurances signed by the county that allow state and federal funds to flow to the airport. The county appoints the airport commission. Much of the dispute in the past year has been over the appointments process and also questions raised by the county treasurer about legal spending at the airport.

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