Says Pilot Spiraled Into Ground, Trying To Find Airport

An NTSB preliminary report released this week says two New Hampshire men killed when their Beech B36TC Bonanza went down in North Garden, VA had trouble seeing the ground.

The accident happened June 14, as pilot David Brown and his boss, Qroe Companies CEO Robert Baldwin, were trying to land on the grass strip at Bundoran Airport. Communications logs between Brown and the controller show the pilot was unable to see the field, and asked to descend from 4,000 feet.

"It's a little too cloudy at the moment," the report quotes Brown, talking to ATC.

The prelim states the controller indicated that was as low as Brown could go, and offered to vector the Bonanza (file photo of type, below right) to the northeast where he'd be able to descend further... but Brown elected to continue his descent.

"Actually the field is directly under me if I could ... spiral down," the report states Brown told the controller.

Brown was then told to switch to the Unicom... and he acknowledged, adding he was "not going to give up yet."

That was the last transmission from the accident aircraft.

The airport manager drove over to the hangar to pick up Brown and Baldwin... but instead, saw smoke from their wrecked Beech and eventually realized the plane he'd heard overhead just a few moments earlier had crashed.

One controller familiar with the accident says it is likely Brown never realized the danger he and his passenger were in.

"It just sounds like [Brown] drove the airplane right into the ground and didn't see it," said Royce Rankin to the Associated Press. "But we don't know. Nobody will ever know."

FMI: Read The Full NTSB Preliminary Report