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A preliminary National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report published Friday reveals that a series of flight complications played a part in the death of former White House staffer Dana Hyde, who died in early March. The report dispels officials’ previous belief that turbulence was the main driver of Hyde’s death.
On March 3, Hyde boarded a Bombardier Challenger 300 alongside her husband and one of their sons in New Hampshire. Despite the success of the preflight inspection and engine start routines, the co-pilot noticed that the plane’s two airspeed indicators didn’t line up and aborted takeoff. After returning safely to a taxiway, the co-pilot noticed that the plane’s right-side pitot probe—which measures air velocity—remained covered. He removed the cover and resumed takeoff.
However, a “rudder limit fault” message arose shortly after starting up the plane’s left engine. The chief pilot attempted two error clearance tests; when neither of these proved successful, he continued with takeoff, “given that the message was an advisory, and not a caution or warning.” Acceleration during takeoff was normal, but vital speed parameters weren’t set, requiring the co-pilot to name them from memory. At 6,000 feet mean sea level (msl), a series of additional Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS) messages appeared, relaying failures to the plane’s autopilot stabilizer trim and mach trim. A reference handbook advised the co-pilot to execute a stabilizer trim checklist, which the chief pilot agreed to.
The checklist’s first item was to move the plane’s stabilizer trim switch to the “off” position. As soon as the co-pilot did this, the aircraft pitched up. The next few seconds consisted of the plane pitching up and down while the co-pilot fought to regain control, after which the chief pilot instructed the co-pilot to move the stabilizer trim switch back to its original “primary” position. Once this was done, the chief pilot “had no problem manually flying the airplane.”
Dana Hyde worked for the Clinton and Obama administrations and was part of the 9/11 Commission.
Credit: Millennium Challenge Corporation
A few minutes later, a passenger alerted the flight crew that another passenger had been injured. The co-pilot entered the cabin to confirm the injury and help the passenger before informing the chief pilot that the plane would need to make an emergency landing. The chief pilot diverted to Connecticut’s Bradley International Airport, where paramedics transported the injured passenger—Dana Hyde—to a nearby hospital. She died there later that day.
While the crew says they didn’t experience any remarkable turbulence around the time of the “in-flight upset,” the plane’s abrupt pitching was aggressive. In its report, the NTSB says the aircraft pitched up to about 11 degrees and hit nearly four Gs of vertical acceleration. After dropping to -2.3 G vertical acceleration, the plane pitched up again to about 20 degrees and +4.2 G. This means Hyde’s body experienced four times its usual weight.
“The plane suddenly convulsed in a manner that violently threw the three of us. My wife was badly injured,” said Hyde’s husband, Jonathan Chambers, in an email to his employer earlier this month. Chambers and his son were not injured.
Neither Chambers nor Conexon, which owns the Bombardier Challenger 300 involved in the incident, have commented on the NTSB’s preliminary findings.
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