Sunday, August 2, 2015

Sunday Globe Special: Plane Truths

I suppose some times accidents do happen:

Father and daughter both drew the world close

"Father-daughter college trip turns tragic in Wisconsin; Boston executive flying own plane crashes" by Laura Crimaldi and Beth Healy Globe Staff  July 30, 2015

BEVERLY — To employees at Beverly Municipal Airport, Joseph F. Trustey was a regular with a down-to-earth style that belied his influential position in Boston’s private equity world.

He kept his two planes at the airport and stopped in a couple of times a week to fly to a business meeting or take his family on a trip.

When Trustey’s eldest child and only son died last October, “we were all just in tears,” said Kenneth Robinson, owner and president of North Atlantic Air Inc., the airport’s fixed-based operator.

Wednesday afternoon, Robinson waved goodbye before Trustey, a top executive at Summit Partners private equity firm, left the airport to take his 18-year-old daughter, Anna, to visit Marquette University in Milwaukee.

The next time he saw Trustey’s single-engine turboprop, it was on a Thursday morning news report about a Boston businessman whose plane had crashed at a small airport in Milwaukee. Trustey, 53, and his daughter had been killed.

“They showed a picture of the tail of the airplane, and I recognized it immediately,” Robinson said.

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At Summit, Trustey was a managing director and chief operating officer, credited with helping the firm become a major player in private equity investing with more than $6.5 billion in assets and 85 investment professionals.

Prior to joining Summit, Trustey was a consultant at Boston’s Bain & Co.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate who was an executive of Bain & Co. and Bain Capital, released a statement calling Trustey a man of “uncommon intellect” who led a life of “exuberance, discovery, and service to others.”

Gabriel Gomez, a former Summit executive who ran for US Senate in 2013, called Trustey a close friend and mentor.

“He was an amazing role model in everything he did in life — as a mentor, family man, and friend,” Gomez said in a statement.

One charity Trustey supported was Hannah & Friends, an Indiana nonprofit that helps children and adults with special needs.

Charlie Weis, the cofounder of Hannah & Friends, said he had encouraged Trustey to give up some of his many board seats in the wake of his son’s death last fall, to have more time with his family.

Weis is the former head football coach for Notre Dame and a former offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots.

“This has been an awful year” for the Trusteys, Weis said. “We are just devastated by the loss.”

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"NTSB reviews air traffic data in fatal Wis. plane crash" by Catherine Cloutier Globe Staff  August 01, 2015

As Joseph F. Trustey’s airplane descended toward Lawrence J. Timmerman Airport in Milwaukee on Wednesday evening, he called in to air traffic control and was given a clear to land.

When the plane was less than a half a mile from the airport, Trustey called back asking the direction of the wind, according to air traffic control audio obtained by the Globe.

Trustey then told the air traffic control tower he was taking a “go-around,” indicating he did not feel comfortable landing and would circle once more before touching down. He did not say why.

The next voice on the recording was an air traffic control worker requesting helicopter assistance and saying, “I’ve got a crash on the airfield.”

The cause of the crash that killed the 53-year-old Boston executive and his 18-year-old daughter, Anna, around 6:15 p.m. Wednesday remained under investigation Friday, according to National Transportation Safety Board officials.

NTSB investigators sought air traffic control communications, radar data, Trustey’s medical records, and information on the plane’s maintenance history.

A preliminary report on the accident is expected to be released late next week.

“At this point, we’re at a fact-gathering phase,” said NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway. “We don’t determine cause this early in the investigation.”

Typically, a go-around “is a normal procedure,” according to Dave Pascoe, pilot and owner of LiveATC.net, who provided the audio recording to the Globe.

“You put full power on and start climbing,” Pascoe said in a phone interview on Friday.

But during Trustey’s attempted landing, “something failed in his execution of the go-around.”

The remnants of Trustey’s Socata TBM-700 were moved to a secure location at the airfield, Holloway said.

Trustey, an experienced pilot who Federal Aviation Administration records indicated was certified to fly in 2006, had been taking his daughter to Milwaukee to visit Marquette University.

The Wenham resident was a managing director and chief operating officer at Summit Partners private equity firm. He kept two planes at the Beverly Municipal Airport and flew often.

About 300 mourners attended a private vigil Thursday evening at the Shore Country Day School, where some wrote their condolences in notes to the Trustey family, according to the head of the school Larry Griffin.

The crash was the second tragedy to befall the Trustey family in the past year. Son Andrew Joseph “A.J.” Trustey died last fall at 22.

A staff member at the Campbell-Lee, Moody Russell Funeral Home in Beverly said Friday that funeral arrangements for Joseph and Anna Trustey have not been finalized.

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This next one maybe not so:

"Gulfstream says jet that crashed in Bedford has design flaw" by Jacqueline Tempera Globe Correspondent  August 01, 2015 

Then wouldn't a lot more of them be locking up?

The manufacturer of the plane that crashed during takeoff in Bedford last year, killing seven people, including the co-owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, said the accident could have been avoided by “a simple check” of the plane’s steering gear, according to an accident report released Friday.

In the report, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. said the inflight crew tried to take off with a gust lock engaged, despite repeated system warnings. The gust lock is designed to lock flight controls when the jet is parked, to prevent movement during strong winds.

“The crew should have aborted,” officials wrote in the report. “Instead, having incorrectly assumed they had resolved the gust lock issue, the crew continued the takeoff roll without comment.”

When the jet began routine take off procedures on May 31, 2014, the lever moved to an “intermediate position,” making it possible for the pilot to accelerate up to 143 miles per hour, but not to take off, the report said.

Though Gulfstream’s report largely placed blame on the crew, officials said they were “actively working” to improve the system. In a new fleet of jets, planes will be prevented from moving at high speeds while the gust locks are engaged.

Who can not testify in their own defense, what with being dead and all.

Wouldn't that eliminate the design flaw?

An advisory stating that the rudder limit was reached flashed during the plane’s taxi. A rudder is used to steer the plane, and the alert is used to indicate when a rudder is moving too much during travel. According to recordings from the aircraft, the pilot told another crew member that this warning had lit up, but did not investigate the alert.

The FAA requires manufacturers to provide an “unmistakable warning” when the gust lock is activated, but the signal on the GIV model has multiple meanings that may have confused pilots, The Philadelphia Inqurier reported.

Professionals flying important people? I dunno. 

(Btw, the co-owner of the Inquirer benefited from the crash).

As the plane continued to move, the throttle became locked. At this point, the pilot “should have, as per training and flight manual guidance on a normal takeoff, confirmed that the control column relaxed into a neutral position,” the report said.

During acceleration, the pilot told his crew the steering was locked but he was unable to engage controls, causing the plane to continue beyond the runway and crash, the report said.

“A simple check of the rudder control pedals . . . ould have demonstrated that the gust lock was engaged and the flight controls were locked, and the takeoff should have been abandoned,” officials wrote.

The company submitted their findings to the National Transportation Safety Board in May. Files about the investigation were released to the NTSB website Friday.

In its own report, SK Travel, the company that owned the jet, urged the FAA to require Gulfstream to “correct the deficiencies” in the gust lock.

In addition to Katz, the crash killed the two pilots, a flight attendant, and three friends who returning to New Jersey after a fund-raiser at the Concord home of author Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard.

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Related: Katz Crash Cover-Up Complete 

The manufacturer took the hit.

"Three bin Ladens killed in England plane crash" by Jon Gambrell Associated Press  August 01, 2015

LONDON — Police said the Embraer Phenom 300 executive jet crashed into a parking lot and burst into flames while trying to land at Blackbushe Airport in southern England on Friday afternoon.

The plane was flying from Malpensa Airport in Milan to the airfield about 40 miles southwest of London, which is used by private planes and flying clubs.

Andrew Thomas, who was at a car auction sales center based at the airport, told the BBC that ‘‘the plane nosedived into the cars and exploded on impact.’’ He said he saw the plane and several cars in flames.

The plane’s pilot was Mazen Salem al-Dajah, a Jordanian in his late 50s.

The bin Laden family disowned Osama in 1994 when Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship because of his militant activities. The Al Qaeda leader was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

So we have been told.

See: Bin Laden Stories Show AmeriKan Media Not to be Believed

It's the plain truth.


The family is a large and wealthy one. Osama bin Laden’s billionaire father Mohammed had more than 50 children and founded the Binladen Group, a sprawling construction conglomerate awarded many major building contracts in the Sunni kingdom.

Mohammed bin Laden died in a plane crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967. One of his sons, Salem, was killed when his ultralight aircraft flew into power lines in San Antonio, Texas, in 1988.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Britain, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdel-Aziz, offered condolences to the wealthy bin Laden family, which owns a major construction company in Saudi Arabia.

That had connections with the Bush family.

In a separate accident Saturday, an aerobatic stunt plane plummeted to the ground during a routine at a car and music festival in northwest England, killing the pilot.

Video shot by an eyewitness showed one jet in a two-plane team going into a steep dive and plowing into a wooded area during the CarFest event at the Oulton Park motor-racing track. Photos showed smoke rising from a field near the site, about 200 miles northwest of London.

DJ Chris Evans, who founded CarFest, said the weekend festival, attended by thousands of people, would continue. The plane belonged to the Gnat Display Team, a charitable group that flies vintage Royal Air Force Gnat fighter jets. 

Maybe it's time to stop the air shows.

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Related: SUSPICIOUS: Bin Laden Plane On Sophisticated Guidance Systems Crashed in Perfect Conditions

As for those planes on 9/11, you will have to look at the clues and decide for yourself what happened down there or at the Pentagon. It's a matter of much contention.

Also seePart possibly from missing plane arrives for testing

They think we are going to believe it floated through the South Pacific at some juncture before washing up on some French island off the coast of eastern Africa?

It very well could be another war game shoot-down as some are saying, which would lead us to....

Malaysia Air crash haunts little villages in Ukraine
New video is linked to Malaysia Airlines crash in Ukraine
Workers finish recovering MH17 wreckage in Ukraine
Malaysia Airlines tweets bring criticism
Maker links airliner missile to Kiev
MH17 next of kin finally view wreckage of downed flight

I don't think we will ever get the truth of that.

NDUs: Malaysia asks islands to be alert for debris

Not to rant about it, but....

Malaysia says debris is from missing flight
Victims’ kin upset by differing views on jet part
France expands search for plane debris
Maldives debris studied for links to plane

Also see:

Plane owners, pilots in Hanscom crash sued by victim’s family

What's the Katz?

Early report released on fatal crash

Do you Trustey it?