Overflew Intended Stop In MN; F-16s Trail, Watch As Aircraft Crashes

A businessman from St. Paul, MN died late Friday night, after his Beechcraft Baron 56TC overshot its intended destination and flew on for more than two hours, before it evidently ran out of fuel and crashed in West Virginia.

The Wisconsin National Guard deployed two F-16s to intercept the aircraft -- which departed Glendive, MT Friday afternoon enroute to St. Paul Downtown Airport -- after it flew over the Twin Cities area and turned southeast. The aircraft was flying at 27,000 feet when controllers lost radio contact with pilot William Roger Cammack near the St. Paul airport.

Two other F-16s met the aircraft as it crossed into Michigan. Those fighters flanked the Baron throughout the remainder of its flight, and attempted to contact the pilot several times with no success. After about two hours, the F-16 pilots could only watch helplessly as the Baron evidently ran out of fuel, and went down in a clearing near Winfield, WV. The crash missed a nearby house by about 250 feet.

Although no official cause of the accident has been determined, family members of Cammack told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune they believe the 56-year-old business owner, father of three and Civil Air Patrol member, lost consciousness sometime during his flight.

The incident is eerily reminiscent of the 1999 Lear 35 crash that killed golfer Payne Stewart and several others. In that case, the aircraft lost cabin pressure... and all on board were either dead or incapacitated long before the flight from Orlando to Dallas ran out of fuel and crashed in the upper Midwest.

Cammack's aircraft, N18LL, was a 1968 Beech Baron 56TC, a limited-production variant of the popular twin that mated the B-60 Duke's turbocharged Lycoming engines to the short-bodied Baron 55 fuselage (a B-55 is shown in the file photo above.)

************************************************

IDENTIFICATION
  Regis#: 18LL        Make/Model: BE56      Description: 56 Turbo Baron
  Date: 03/18/2006     Time: 0337

  Event Type: Accident   Highest Injury: Fatal     Mid Air: N    Missing: N
  Damage: Destroyed

LOCATION
  City: CHARLESTON   State: WV   Country: US

DESCRIPTION
  ACFT CRASHED UNDER UNKNOWN CIRCUMSTANCES AFTER FUEL EXHAUTION, THE ONE
  PERSON ON BOARD WAS FATALLY INJURED, 10 NNW OF CHARLESTON, WV

INJURY DATA      Total Fatal:   1
                 # Crew:   1     Fat:   1     Ser:   0     Min:   0     Unk:   
                 # Pass:   0     Fat:   0     Ser:   0     Min:   0     Unk:   
                 # Grnd:         Fat:   0     Ser:   0     Min:   0     Unk:   

WEATHER: UNK

OTHER DATA

  Departed: GLENDIVE, MT                Dep Date:    Dep. Time:     
  Destination: SAINT PAUL, MN           Flt Plan: IFR          Wx Briefing: 
  Last Radio Cont:
  Last Clearance:

  FAA FSDO: CHARLESTON, WV  (EA09)                Entry date: 03/20/2006

FMI: www.faa.gov