Relatively few details have emerged about the crash of a private plane that killed at least six people in Bangor during Sunday night's winter storm.
Federal investigators were en route to the airport on Monday to begin searching for clues for the cause of one of the deadliest aviation accidents in Maine in years. Bangor International Airport is expected to remain closed until Tuesday.
The private plane — a twin-engine Bombardier Challenger 600 — attempted to take off at 7:45 p.m. at a time when the winter storm was intensifying. A preliminary incident report released Monday morning by the Federal Aviation Administration said the plane “crashed under unknown circumstance on departure, came to rest inverted and caught on fire."
The FAA's initial report listed seven fatalities and one serious injury. But in a joint press release sent Monday afternoon, Bangor International Airport and the Bangor Police Department said the flight's manifest showed six people were aboard and all were presumed dead.
"When an accident such as this occurs, there are numerous agencies and assets, both state and federal, that must coordinate their respective portions of the investigation," the airport and police department said in the statement. "With the large number of stakeholders involved, it is important that we don’t release any information until all parties have completed their work and can confirm the information being released."
According to the FAA incident report, the flight was registered to KTKJ Challenger LLC based in Houston, Texas.
Earlier Monday, Bangor airport director Jose Saavedra told reporters that first responders were on scene within a minute but he declined to provide additional details until federal investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board arrived. It was unclear late-Monday when investigators would arrive, however. Airport spokeswoman Aimee Thibodeau said Monday evening that NTSB investigators were still not on scene.
Bangor had already received several inches of snow by the time of the accident. But Saavedra said the airport was open and there were commercial flights landing and departing around that time. Snow removal and de-icing operations were in progress at the time of the crash, he said.
"We prepare for this on a regular basis," Saavedra said. "This is a normal for us to deal with weather events. We had crews on site to address the weather event that we had ongoing."
Saavedra said decisions about when to close the airport due to weather are made on a case-by-case basis. But he said the airport has crews available to handle snow clean-up 24/7. More than 10,000 flights were canceled nationwide on Sunday because of the widespread, severe winter storm — with thousands more canceled, delayed or diverted on Monday as well.
In a press release Monday morning, the NTSB said investigators typically focus on three primary areas: the pilot, the aircraft and the surrounding environment at the time of the incident. They will review, among other things, the flight track data, recordings with air traffic controllers, weather conditions, airplane maintenance records, the license and flight experience of any pilots as well as any available video of the incident.
