NTSB: Pilot didn't call for help before small plane crashed
The pilot who died in a small plane crash outside a suburban Minnesota airport reported nothing unusual in his radio transmission moments before the crash, a federal investigator said Thursday.
The pilot, who family members have identified as 53-year-old Wayne Monson, had requested permission to perform a few landings and takeoffs on Wednesday before heading to Osceola, Wis., said Pam Sullivan, a senior air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.
Sullivan told the Star Tribune that a female student pilot, who she would not identify, was also in the 1958 twin-engine Beechcraft 18. She did not confirm Monson was flying the plane but said the student would not have been qualified to fly the plane.
Autopsies were being conducted Thursday on both victims.
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Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said the plane had left the Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie Wednesday when it turned around, tried to return to the airport and crashed.
Witnesses told investigators the plane failed to gain much altitude.
The plane was trying to take off between 11:30 a.m. and noon when it "started wobbling back and forth and went down" in the yard of a historic home that the city owns, said Eden Prairie spokeswoman Joyce Lorenz.
The plane did not touch the house, but a piece did land on the porch. No one was inside the house.
Andrew Osowski, 14, of Eden Prairie, said he was working with about 20 children from a day care in a park down the road from the airport when he saw a plane coming up at an angle.
"It just started teeter-tottering," Osowski said, adding that smoke started coming from the right engine. "It turned, it just went down at an angle. And we just heard 'boom!'"
"It was scary. I saw black smoke, and once you see black smoke, that's something that's very bad," Osowski said.
Monson had extensive aviation experience, but not with the plane he was flying, his son Brandon said Thursday. Brandon said his father bought the plane a year ago and repaired it on his own.
"He was fixing it up to take it on vacations during the summer," Brandon Monson said.
Wayne Monson was born in Mankato, grew up in south-central Minnesota and was living in Osceola, Wis., and Hibbing, Minn., according to his mother, Sylvia Monson. He's the second oldest of five children.
Monson's ex-wife, Sherri Monson, said her former husband was an experienced pilot.
"We had flown when we were married. He had handled many difficult situations and had survived them," Sherri Monson, Brandon's mother, said.