Pilot was likely distracted before crash that killed 8 off North Carolina’s coast, investigators say
BEAUFORT, NC — The pilot of a small plane that crashed off the coast of North Carolina in 2022, killing the pilot, four teenagers and three other adults, was likely distracted while programming the plane’s flight management system after takeoff, according to a final report from federal researchers.
The pilot likely failed to monitor the plane’s speed as the plane slowed and came to a stop, the report said. The pilot also likely experienced āspatial disorientationā after the stall due to poor weather conditions that limited his visibility. He failed to regain control of the aircraft.
The National Transportation Safety Board released its final report on the crash last week, nearly two years after the single-engine Pilatus PC-12 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near the southern edge of the Outer Banks.
Six of the passengers were from the coastal region of Carteret County, returning from a charity hunting event. The plane had taken off from Hyde County Airport on the mainland and was headed south to Beaufort, the seat of Carteret County.
Carteret County includes communities such as Emerald Isle and Atlantic Beach, as well as the Cape Lookout National Seashore. But the largely rural province is also home to older fishing villages.
The sheriff’s office identified the adults aboard the plane as pilot Ernest Durwood Rawls, 67, of Greenville; Jeffrey Worthington Rawls, 28, of Greenville; Stephanie Ann McInnis Fulcher, 42, at sea level; and Douglas Hunter Parks, 45, at sea level.
The teens were identified as Jonathan Kole McInnis, 15, of Sea Level; Noah Lee Styron, 15, of Cedar Island; Michael Daily Shepard, 15, of Atlantic; and Jacob Nolan Taylor, 16, of Atlantic. The four teens attended East Carteret High School.
The pilot’s estate, as well as the companies that employed the pilot and owned the plane, reached a $15 million settlement last year with the families of five passengers who filed wrongful death lawsuits.
The final NTSB report stated that the pilot failed to enter a flight plan into the aircraft’s integrated flight management system before taking off. He said, “We’ll come back to it later.”
āFrom shortly after the aircraft leveled off after takeoff, through the final seconds of the flight, the pilot attempted to program, delete, reprogram and activate a flight plan in the aircraft’s flight management system,ā the report said.