WASHINGTON — Three hours before the plane crash that killed Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone last fall, the pilot nearly canceled the flight because of poor weather, federal investigators disclosed Friday.
"OK, ah, you know what?" pilot Richard Conry told a weather specialist with the Federal Aviation Administration. "I don't think I'm going to take this flight." But an hour later, Conry decided to press on, after determining the snowy weather had improved and was within acceptable conditions for flying.
The National Transportation Safety Board has not established a cause for the Oct. 25 crash, which occurred days before the November elections, but the inquiry has raised questions about the flying skills of Conry and copilot Michael Guess, the procedures used to de-ice the plane, and the FAA's oversight of aviation charter companies, according to investigative reports released Friday.
Eight people died in the accident, including the Democratic senator's wife and daughter. The popular liberal was in a tight reelection race, and his death may have played a fateful role in putting the Senate back under Republican control.
Three campaign workers onboard the twin-engine turboprop, though critically injured, apparently survived the initial impact but perished in the intense fire that followed, according to NTSB summaries of autopsy reports. All the others were killed instantly.
The King Air A100 took off from the state capital of St. Paul about 9:35 a.m., and crashed less than 50 minutes later as the pilots were attempting to make an instrument landing in Eveleth, Minn. The plane was not equipped with a cockpit voice recorder, so the pilots' final words are not known.
The weather that day was overcast with light snow, and the conditions created the possibility for ice to form on the plane. Ice on the wings can cause a plane to stall.
Conry, 55, was popular at his workplace, Aviation Charter Inc. But NTSB investigators found that other pilots questioned his flying skills. One pilot described him as "too timid to be a captain," and others said he often let his copilots do the flying.
Conry had previous troubles, with a 1990 federal conviction for wire fraud. At one stage in his career, he kept two sets of logbooks for his flying hours, with different totals, investigators said.
Two days before the accident, Conry had "smoothly" passed a periodic evaluation under a senior pilot. But in the three-day period before the crash, he had committed several errors.
