The sight-seeing plane that crashed on Sterling Mountain in 2018, leaving a pilot and two passengers dead, was overweight and overstressed, according to a new report.
The glider crashed near Morristown on August 29, 2018, killing pilot Don Post, 70, and two passengers from Hamden, Connecticut — Frank and Suzanne Moroz, 58 and 56, respectively.
The plane ride was supposed to be a 30-minute sightseeing trip, authorities said at the time. When the glider didn’t return to the Stowe-Morrisville State Airport when expected, a search was launched, and the glider was found in a heavily wooded area about 1,000 feet from the summit of Sterling Mountain.
A new report from the National Transportation Safety Board indicates that the plane was 50 pounds overweight when it fell, and lacked required seat belts and shoulder harnesses that should have distributed that weight more evenly across the plane.
The plane and its contents weighed in at 1,480 pounds, exceeding the allowable limit of 1,430 pounds, the report shows. The plane’s center of gravity also approached the allowable limit, at 101.63 inches aft of datum, while the allowable range was 101.08 to 105.18 inches, according to the report.
Those problems were compounded by the fact that the glider did not have the proper lap belts and shoulder harnesses installed, despite the fact that Post had bought the necessary equipment months prior.
In May 2018, Post, who owned the company Stowe Soaring, brought a different plane that was identical to the one that crashed to an annual inspection, where he was told that the proper seat belts and shoulder harnesses were required before the inspection could be completed. The seat belts in the plane at the time of inspection were not original equipment, and were not approved as equivalent replacements, according to the report.
Post agreed to the installation, and purchased an additional set of seat belts and shoulder harnesses for the glider that was in the crash. He picked up that additional equipment on June 27, 2018.
When the plane was recovered after the crash, inspectors confirmed there were no shoulder harnesses installed in the glider, and only a single lap belt to restrain the two passengers.
When only one seat belt was used for the two passengers, that put more impact on the surrounding structure of the plane, according to the report.
While the two occupants’ weight should have been distributed between six points, instead it was spread between just two.
When the plane was discovered after the crash, it was resting nose-down, with its left wing torn, but attached. The report states that flight control continuity was confirmed from the cockpit to all “flight control surfaces.”
On the day of the crash, the tow pilot reported checking the winds on two commercial websites before takeoff, the report notes. The winds in Plattsburg, New York (40 miles from Morristown), were reported at 37 knots, while Morristown’s winds were reported at 16 knots. The pilot thought the discrepancy was unusual, according to the report, since the two speeds were typically within a few knots of each other.
During the tow plane’s ascent from the Morrisville-Stowe State Airport, and before the glider’s release, the tow pilot reported the air was “really smooth,” though he had to weave around the clouds. He said there was plenty of room between the clouds, but that some mountaintops were partially obscured, according to the report.
The tow pilot reported that Post, the glider pilot, “liked to run the ridge on the Burlington (west) side, and the clouds were hard to see,” but said the glider pilot typically checked the weather before a flight.
A weather forecasting model showed cloudy conditions were possible with downdrafts and winds of 25 knots or greater possible along the route.
The report states that Post was an experienced flyer, with 1,214 hours logged in gliders, and 406 hours in the same make and model glider as the one in the crash.
A toxicology report showed that the pilot was not impaired by drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash. His cause of death was listed as “blunt impacts.”
