Report: All 10 on NASCAR team plane die in crash
Hendrick Motorsports aircraft was en route to race in Virginia
Sunday, October 24, 2004 Posted: 10:02 PM EDT (0202 GMT)

(CNN) -- All 10 people aboard a twin-engine plane owned by stock car racing team Hendrick Motorsports were killed Sunday when the plane crashed outside Martinsville, Virginia, according to a nearby funeral home.

The plane left Concord, North Carolina, about 12:30 p.m. bound for Martinsville, where NASCAR's Subway 500 was being run, FAA spokeswoman Arlene Murray said.

The Beech 200 went down in rough terrain in the Blue Ridge Mountains about seven miles west of Martinsville, Highway Patrol spokesman Paul Knipple said.

Hendrick driver Jimmie Johnson won the race Sunday afternoon but skipped his appearance at Victory Lane, NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter told reporters.

Hendrick also owns cars driven by Brian Vickers, Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte.

"We don't have a lot of details at the moment, but we're going to say an extra prayer for everyone in the Hendrick organization at this time," Hunter said.

He said the racing crew was not told about the crash until after the race.

The FAA, the National Transportation Safety Board and Virginia authorities were investigating the crash, Hunter said.

Harry Litten, manager of Moody Funeral Service in nearby Stuart, Virginia, said the bodies were still at the site, where investigators were working.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/10/24/nascar.plane.crash/

Hendrick plane crashes, killing all 10 aboard
Team members were headed to Martinsville Speedway
October 25, 2004
05:50 PM EDT (21:50 GMT)




MARTINSVILLE, Va. (AP) -- One of auto racing's most successful dynasties was in mourning after a plane owned by Hendrick Motorsports crashed in thick fog en route to a NASCAR race, killing all 10 people aboard, including the son, brother and two nieces of owner Rick Hendrick.


Ricky Hendrick

The Beech 200 King Air took off from Concord, N.C., and crashed Sunday in the Bull Mountain area seven miles from the Blue Ridge Regional Airport in Spencer, near the Martinsville Speedway, said Arlene Murray, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

The National Transportation Safety Board began its investigation Monday but an air safety investigator had not yet been to the crash site.

"There is no information that any flight data or cockpit voice recorders were on board the aircraft," the investigator, Brian Rayner, said.

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Send condolences to Hendrick Motorsports


Rayner said tapes of any communication between the pilot and the FAA had been requested by air traffic specialists and would be reviewed Monday.

Asked how the plane hit, Rayner said, "It's my understanding that the airplane struck a steep incline and that the airplane and all its associated parts are confined to an area approximately 200 feet long."


Randy Dorton

News of the crash halted Hendrick driver Jimmie Johnson's victory celebration after the Subway 500 in Martinsville as word of the deaths filtered through the Hendrick team, which also includes drivers Jeff Gordon, Terry Labonte and Brian Vickers.

"It's just very tough," said Donnie Floyd, an employee of Hendrick, who placed a bouquet of flowers outside the company's Charlotte, N.C., headquarters. "We are like one big family."

Hendrick Motorsports issued a statement late Sunday asking "that those affected be kept in your thoughts and prayers, and respectfully requests that privacy be considered throughout this difficult time."


John Hendrick

Rick Hendrick, 53, did not go to the race because he wasn't feeling well, a team spokesman said.

It was the second major plane accident in less than a week: On Tuesday, 13 people died and two were injured when a commuter plane crashed and burned near Kirksville, Mo. Many of the passengers were doctors and other medical professionals heading to a conference.

Hendrick employs 460 workers at its North Carolina compound, which includes race shops and a 15,000-square-foot museum and team store. Flowers were placed on shrubs leading into the compound.

Early Monday, a chaplain from the Motor Racing Outreach group met with Hendrick employees for a prayer service. Counselors and chaplains were available for workers.

Rick Hendrick and his wife Linda did not attend that service. In addition to their son Ricky, the couple also has a daughter.
The team spokesman said Hendrick's cars will race this weekend in Atlanta and that the company was spending Monday trying to finalize details for a memorial service.

The tragedy came on what was to be a triumphant day for the company, with Johnson winning his series-best sixth race and Gordon rallying from a poor start to finish ninth and move into second place in the championship standings.

NASCAR officials learned of the accident during the Subway 500 but withheld the news from the Hendrick drivers until afterward, NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter said.

NASCAR drivers reacted with a familiar sadness. Series stars Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki were killed in separate air crashes in 1993.

"I was hoping I'd never hear this," NASCAR driver Mark Martin told the Speed Channel after the race. Martin's father, stepmother and half sister died in 1998 when a private plane his father was piloting crashed in Nevada. "I just feel so bad it's unreal," said Martin, himself a pilot.



Driver Rusty Wallace, also a pilot, said he considered the airports in Talladega, Ala., and Martinsville the two most dangerous facilities to fly into for races.

Hendrick's team has been on a season-long celebration of its 20th anniversary in NASCAR's top series. The organization has won five titles in the top series, three truck series championships, and one Busch series crown.

The team has more than 100 Cup series wins, making Rick Hendrick just the second team owner in NASCAR's modern era to surpass that mark. He's also viewed as a pioneer for beginning the movement to multicar teams in the 1980s.

Hendrick Motorsports identified the dead as: Ricky Hendrick, 24, Rick Hendrick's son; John Hendrick, Rick Hendrick's brother and president of Hendrick Motorsports; Kimberly and Jennifer Hendrick, John Hendrick's 22-year-old twin daughters; Joe Jackson, an executive with DuPont; Jeff Turner, general manager of Hendrick Motorsports; Randy Dorton, 50, the team's chief engine builder; Scott Lathram, 38, a pilot for NASCAR driver Tony Stewart; and pilots Richard Tracy and Elizabeth Morrison, 31.

Ricky Hendrick began his career driving a Craftsman truck for his father, but retired from the Busch Series in 2002 because of a racing-related shoulder injury. His father then made him the owner of the Busch car Vickers drove to the series championship last season, and was grooming him for a larger role.

Joe McGovern, a racing fan from Concord, N.C., drove by the team's compound to pay his respects. "It's just devastating," he said. "This was just a great racing team and they are also such nice people."


http://www.nascar.com/2004/news/headlines/cup/10/24/bc.car.nascar.hendrick.ap/index.html

Tuesday, October 26, 2004
NTSB: Hendrick plane had no near-ground alert
Federal investigators will look at flight conditions, pilot, airplane to find cause of crash, they say


By Mike Mulhern and Jim Sparks
JOURNAL REPORTERS


"¢ NTSB: Hendrick plane had no near-ground alert
Federal investigators will look at flight conditions, pilot, airplane to find cause of crash, they say


PATRICK SPRINGS, Va.

Federal investigators said yesterday that a plane carrying members of the Hendrick Motorsports organization that crashed Sunday, killing all 10 people aboard, did not carry equipment to alert the pilots that the plane was too close to the ground.

The bodies of the victims were all recovered from the steep terrain, with many police and emergency workers helping out. Sgt. Bob Carpentieri, a spokesman with the Virginia State Police, said that although the crash site was only about a mile and a half off the road, it took workers at least an hour to get in or out.

"The only method we have of getting up to the scene is on ATVs (four-wheel drive, all-terrain vehicles), so it's a slow, tedious process,'' Carpentieri said.

Brian Rayner, an air-safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said that the Beechcraft King Air B200 did not carry a ground-proximity warning system, nor did it have flight data or voice cockpit recorders. The equipment is not required.

Rayner said that the pilots had tried to approach the landing field at Blue Ridge Airport near Martinsville using the plane's instruments. They were not able to complete the approach, however, and were looping around in dense fog when the plane slammed into the southeast face of Bull Mountain, in Patrick County, near Stuart.

The crash occurred about 12:30 p.m.; the plane had left the airport in Concord, N.C., on its way to Martinsville Speedway, about noon. Rayner said that the debris field was within a 200-foot area on an extremely steep incline of Bull Mountain. The plane sheared off several treetops when it hit. Its fuselage, which had burned, and sections of the wings and tail were easily recognizable.

Rayner said that the investigation of the crash would focus on three main areas: the flight conditions such as the weather, the pilot's training and experience, and the airplane.

"We'll look at man, machine and environment," Rayner said.

He said that the training records of both pilots have been requested, as well as maintenance records of the plane. He said he expects to issue a preliminary report in about a week.

Hendrick Motorsports is owned by Rick Hendrick. Hendrick did not join the flight because he wasn't feeling well, a team spokesman said.

Those killed were: Ricky Hendrick, Rick's son; John Hendrick, his brother and the president of Hendrick Motorsports; Randy Dorton, the head of the organization's engine department; Jennifer and Kimberly Hendrick, John's two daughters; DuPont's Joe Jackson; Scott Lathram, Tony Stewart's backup helicopter pilot, who was headed for Army duty in Iraq; Jeff Turner, the general manager for Hendrick Motorsports; and pilots Elizabeth Morrison and Richard Tracy.

Hendrick officials, including its drivers, were in seclusion yesterday. A chaplain from the Motor Racing Outreach group met with Hendrick employees for a prayer service. Counselors and chaplains were available for workers. Hendrick driver Jimmie Johnson, who won Sunday's Nextel Cup race at Martinsville, was told about the crash, as were the other Hendrick drivers and team members, after the race.

Fear of small airports

There's probably not a man on the stock-car tour who hasn't flown to a track in a Beechcraft King Air B200 like the one in which the Hendrick contingent was flying when it crashed.

The twin-prop plane is a reliable workhorse for NASCAR teams as well as for many businesspeople throughout the country. Most race teams have been using it recently for short hauls, switching to faster planes for longer distances.

Few NASCAR teams, however, use the unmanned, 5,002-foot runway near Martinsville. Instead, they make the two-hour drive from their shops near Charlotte.

NASCAR driver Rusty Wallace, a longtime pilot, said he considers the Martinsville and Talladega airports a problem.

"Talladega and this place are the two most dangerous approaches on the circuit," Wallace said. "Maybe the states will fix something. Obviously, something went majorly wrong."

Danny Culler, a longtime pilot for the Richard Childress operation, has been flying since 1971 and has more than 11,000 hours in the air, including more than 6,000 hours in King Airs.

"I just flew up there the other day," Culler said. "At airports like Winston-Salem and Greensboro and Concord, where there is a tower, when the weather is bad ... the approach controller ... turns you over to the control tower and says 'Contact the control tower on frequency such-and-such. And most airports, when the weather is bad, can give you the ceiling and visibility right then, not something that might be an hour old.''

"The other thing is Martinsville, being a noncontrolled airport like Talladega, does not have a precision-instrument approach.

Talladega's airport is similar to Blue Ridge, but the FAA brings in a special crew on race weekends to handle the traffic, often as many as 600 planes.

Most of the rest of the airports NASCAR teams fly into are pretty good, Culler said.

Officials at the Blue Ridge Regional Airport in Martinsville had little comment about the crash yesterday.

Visibility Sunday was poor enough to require pilots to rely on instruments, but the weather "was nothing unusual," airport manager Tommy Grimes said.

Grimes would not speculate on what caused the crash. "Nobody at this point really knows what they did," he said.

The crash is unlikely to persuade anyone in NASCAR to cut back on private planes.

The "NASCAR Air Force" is huge. Most drivers have their own planes, and some, such as Mark Martin, Wallace and Ricky Rudd, also are pilots.

The tight NASCAR schedule, combined with personal-appearance schedules, prevent the use of many commercial flights.

"The way the weekends are set up, the location of the race tracks and the schedule being the way it is, you just about have to use private-airplane travel to get anywhere," driver Jeff Green said. "Taking the chance on being delayed in an airport just won't work. You have to be there Friday morning for practice or you miss practice. Miss practice, and they don't let you attempt to qualify.''

Fans gather

The Hendrick family issued a statement on its Web site yesterday thanking people for their support and asking for privacy.

A makeshift memorial of flowers, balloons, and handwritten signs and cards grew larger outside the Hendrick racing shop in Charlotte, as fans acknowledged the profound loss suffered by one of auto racing's most successful families.

"I just could not stay in my house and do nothing," said Lacy Bono of nearby Mooresville, N.C., who also dropped flowers under a street sign named for Rick Hendrick's late father, Papa Joe Hendrick. "I needed to come out and pay my respects."

Bono knew some of the crash victims, including engine builder Dorton and Lathram, the pilot for Tony Stewart.

"This is a tragedy for the entire sport," she said. "When that happens, all the fans band together and we become one big family."

Joan MacDonald of Moores-ville couldn't control her tears after she left flowers at the Hendrick shop. She said she wanted to show her support for the team members who were trying to prepare for this weekend's race in Atlanta.

"They know they have to get ready for the Atlanta race, so they will pick themselves up and focus," she said. "I'm sure it will be difficult, but they know the (title) race isn't over yet. Everything is very tense."

"¢ Jim Sparks can be reached at 727-7301 or at jsparks@wsjournal.com

"¢ Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com

http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031778748535&path=&s=

This week Avweb reports:

But Accidents Also Are Up
Thirty-nine people died in general aviation aircraft in October, EAA reported last week. That's the second-deadliest October in over six years, and should be a "wake-up call" for aviators, EAA said. With winter ahead, and the extra challenges of icing, darkness and marginal weather, pilots need to be extra-vigilant to bring the accident rate down. All pilots should take advantage of the available safety initiatives such as EAA's Technical Counselor and Flight Advisor programs for homebuilders, and safety programs offered by the FAA, AOPA and other organizations. "Fly in good weather, and practice superior airmanship," EAA says, and that's a good start for advice on how to avoid becoming a statistic.

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/309-full.html#188490