The Carnahan Crash
On October 16, 2000, a Cessna 335 carrying Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan and an aide and flown by the governor’s son crashed near Hillsboro, Mo., killing all aboard. Prior to determining a probable cause, the NTSB last week released the documents it has collected during its investigation. AVweb has these excerpts from the docket.
The NTSB supplied complete copies of the documents in its docket on the October 16, 2000, crash of Gov. Mel Carnahan's Cessna 335 on CD-ROM. Data on the CD-ROM consists primarily of a series of TIFF images comprising the various documents in the docket. A display engine is also provided for installation on computers running Windows 95 or later.
AVweb has attempted to summarize the various documents in the docket by publishing the factual reports from each of the major investigative groups involved with this accident. Omitted from these factual reports are the documents and images on which they are based.
The following files are available to view or download in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF - free readers are available from Adobe's Web site) or PowerPoint 2000 (a free PowerPoint viewer is available from Microsoft).
- Operations Group Chairman's Factual Report
- Systems Group Chairman's Factual Report
- Air Traffic Control Group Chairman's Factual Report
- Air Traffic Control Transcript, St. Louis Low West TRACON
- Meteorological Factual Report
According to the NTSB, the pilot of the accident aircraft reported to ATC a failure of his primary attitude indicator shortly before the crash. These recent articles on AVweb have discussed vacuum system failures:
- Handling A Vacuum System Failure
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- Vacuum Pump Substitutes From $500 To $300,000
Finally, and if you're really feeling lucky, AVweb has made available for download the NTSB CD-ROM's complete contents in a ZIP file. The ZIP file is 56.9 Mb in size but contains the complete docket as well as the search engine application, which runs on Windows 95 and later. You will need at least 70 Mb of available disk space to decompress the ZIP file, probably more to install and run the display engine.
AVweb cannot be responsible for the display engine or whether it will run on your Windows-compatible computer. Please do not contact AVweb seeking technical support on downloading, installing or using this ZIP file and/or the display engine. You're on your own.