Retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffle was not flying his own jet when it crashed last month, killing him and six others, investigators reported Friday.
A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board also concluded that the person sitting in the right seat while the experienced pilot was at the controls was not qualified to be the co-pilot. At Biffle and Control Dennis Dutton, a retired airline pilot, and his son Jack, all licensed pilots, noticed a gauge malfunction in the Cessna C550 before the crash while attempting to return to Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina.
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The plane burst into flames after impacting the ground about a third of a mile (550 m) from the airport’s runway.
The NTSB clarified that Jack Dutton was in the co-pilot seat. Neither Jack Dutton nor Biffle had the correct endorsements on their pilot’s licenses to serve as copilots on that plane, and the younger Dutton had only 175 hours of flight experience. Aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti, who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration, said he believes the lack of an experienced copilot may have been a key factor in the crash.
“This airplane needs two trained pilots, and if things go wrong and you don’t have a trained pilot, then bad things can happen,” Guzzetti said. “Had there been two qualified pilots up front, the plane could have landed safely.”
The report said that the thrust reverser indicator light was not working before takeoff, but the pilot’s altimeter and some other instruments on the left side of the cockpit were not working after the plane was airborne. Reports later said the pilot temporarily handed over control to the copilot while he tried to fix the problems.
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The cause of the plane’s problems is unclear at this stage in the investigation, in part because the cockpit voice recorder was cut off at times and NTSB experts are just beginning to determine the cause of the crash. Over the radio, Jack Dutton announced, “We’ve got some problems here” and the cockpit recorder captured part of a conversation between the three pilots about the plane’s problems.
John Cox, who is the CEO of Safety Operating Systems, said that instrument problems on the plane could be a bigger factor in the crash than the co-pilot’s inexperience.
“Flight equipment failure is a serious situation in the clouds,” Cox said.
But the report indicates that the pilots were able to fix the problems with the gauges before attempting to land back at the airport. The NTSB said that after a few minutes of discussion where Biffle was suggesting possibilities about what was going wrong, the pilot indicated that he had found a problem but did not say what it was. At that point, the audio on the cockpit recorder returned to normal, and there was no further discussion of the equipment problems prior to the crash.
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It is not clear why the plane came in so low and slow that it clipped two landing light poles before crashing. Investigators examining the wreckage discovered the throttle in the full forward position. Guzzetti said the pilot may have sensed the plane was too low and may have tried to pull up and go around.
Biffle’s wife Christina and children Ryder, 5, and Emma, 14, were killed in the crash along with his partner, Craig Wadsworth.
Biffle, 55, has won more than 50 races across NASCAR’s three circuits, including 19 at the Cup Series level. He also won the Truck Series Championship in 2000 and the Xfinity Series title in 2002.
In 2024, Biffle was honored for his humanitarian efforts when Hurricane Helen hit the US, flooding, even using his personal helicopter to deliver aid to remote western North Carolina.
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Hundreds of people from the NASCAR community gathered to honor Biffle at a public memorial service at an arena in Charlotte earlier this month.
The jet had taken off from Statesville Regional Airport, about 45 miles (72 km) north of Charlotte, while attempting to return and land 10 minutes before the crash. Every indication was that the plane needed to land early due to problems, so flying into Charlotte was not a good option.
During the short flight, the aircraft’s speed and altitude fluctuated significantly. At one point, the plane quickly climbed from 1,800 feet (550 m) to 4,000 feet (1,220 m). Before the crash, it was only two hundred feet off the ground.
An unqualified copilot in that seat is a violation of FAA regulations that allow the agency to suspend licenses for both the pilot and the unqualified copilot if discovered under normal circumstances. But the FAA may not know about it unless someone reports it.
