The National Transportation Saftety Board's (NTSB) preliminary report on the fatal Soldotna airplane crash that left 10 dead in July offers few new details on one of Alaska's deadliest plane crashes of the last quarter century.
The crash occurred around 11:20 a.m. July 7. Pilot Walter "Willy" Rediske's De Haviland DHC-3 Otter crashed on the runway after takeoff from the Soldotna airport.
The crash left 10 dead – Water Rediske, 42, owner of Rediske Air, along with two families from South Carolina. Husband and wife Milton and Kimberly Antonakos and their three children -- Olivia, Anna and Mills -- were reported among the dead, along with Dr. Chris McManus, his wife Stacey, and their two children Connor and Meghan.
Aircraft accidents are often handled by the NTSB's regional office, but this crash of "high consequence" was investigated by a special team from the NTSB office in Washington D.C., said agency spokesman Peter Knudson. Knudson added Thursday that the preliminary reports don't "necessarily offer new information." Its purpose is "putting the accident on record, in our database." He said. "That's really the first step."
Rediske, 42, was the owner of Rediske Air, a private charter-plane company formed in 1991 according to Alaska state records. The company was headquartered in Nikiski, a community of about 4,000 some 25 miles north of Soldotna on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. Rediske Air operates a small Soldotna office that acted as a transfer terminal for passengers, as well as a private plane charter business in Anchorage, near Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. The company operates six planes including the single-engine DeHavilland turbine Otter that crashed in July.
There were no witnesses to the crash. The first to arrive at the scene, Mark Swensen with the Missionary Aviation Repair Center, said he had been on his way to the airport that morning when he saw a fireball above tall trees. He found the plane in flames just south of the runway, identified by the NTSB as runway 25, with sheet metal burning. He estimated that just two minutes elapsed between when he saw the fireball and his arrival on scene.
The plane was the "destroyed by impact forces and postcrash fire," the NTSB writes in its preliminary report. Rediske was headed Bear Mountain Lodge in "visual meterological conditions." No flight plan was filed.
Few details were forthcoming in the days after the crash, and without any witnesses or video records of the accident, investigators were left with only five cellphones and a GPS unit recovered from the wreckage.
Investigator Earl Weener told Alaska Dispatch in July: "The airplane was airborne prior to its impact with the ground, and it impacted in a right-wing down, nose-low attitude," about 80 feet from the runway. The propeller was also reportedly still spinning at the time of impact, though whether that implied the engine was still operational wasn't clear.
Weener added that "loss of control" is still a possible cause of the crash, a broad term that could encompass anything from weather-related circumstances to mechanical failure or pilot error.
Investigators stated that it was unlikely the plane's weight had caused the accident, but other factors were still on the table, including whether the airplane stalled.
The preliminary report released by NTSB reiterates the most basic facts surrounding the accident.
"We did release quite a bit of information when we were on the scene in Soldotna," Knudson said. The final report may not be released for a year.
This summer has been one of the worst for aviation fatalities in Alaska in years.
Contact Laurel Andrews at laurel(at)alaskadispatch.com