3 killed in Lincoln County plane crash

Source: Star Tribune

A small airplane crashed in rural Lincoln County Sunday night, killing three people.

Elizabeth Isham Cory, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said there were "definitely three fatalities'' in the crash of a four-seat Cirrus SR22 airplane late Sunday night.

According to the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office, the 2005 Cirrus SR22 -- manufactured by Duluth-based Cirrus Design Corp. -- crashed about 9 p.m. in a plowed field a half mile south of Co. Rd. 125, not far from Ivanhoe.

The sheriff's office said the plane's signature parachute deployed, but it was unclear whether the plane's internal explosive charge released it or if the chute opened when the plane hit the ground.

Emergency crews were standing by today until investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board arrived and determined whether it was safe to recover crash victims.

Bill King, a Cirrus vice president, said the company "received a call early [Monday] and we have a team" at the crash site waiting for the federal investigators to arrive.

"Our duty now is to the FAA and the NTSB to try to help identify the cause of this accident, to get answers for the family," King said.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with them."

Asked whether the parachute could have deployed as a result of a crash, King said, "That could have happened. We don't know whether the parachute was deployed manually or not."

Cirrus has become a major player in the manufacture of small airplanes in the five years since it started production of the sleek SR22, which comes with an airframe parachute designed to float the entire plane to the ground in case of emergency.

The company was dogged by a rash of early accidents, including at least nine fatal crashes killing more than a dozen people -- including company pilot Scott Anderson, who died in a March 1999 test flight.

But Cirrus also has logged "five deployments of parachutes where people walked away," King said.

"It's been many, many months since we've had to deal with anything like this," he said. "We're grieving with the family."

King said there were questions raised after some of the earlier fatal crashes about whether pilots had been adequately trained to fly the SR22.

"The airplanes are very technical airplanes," he said, but it will take intensive analysis by NTSB and other investigators to determine whether training, pilot error or technical failure factored into the latest crash.