Retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffle was not flying his own jet when it crashed last month, killing him and six others, according to a report Friday by investigators.
The preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board also concluded that while an experienced pilot was at the controls, the person sitting in the right seat was not qualified to be the co-pilot. Biffle and retired airline pilot at the controls, Dennis Dutton, and his son Jack, who were all licensed pilots, noticed problems with the gauges malfunctioning on the Cessna C550 before it crashed while trying to return to Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina.
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The plane burst into flames when it hit the ground about a third of a mile (550 meters) from the airport’s runway.
The NTSB made it clear that Jack Dutton was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. Neither Jack Dutton nor Biffle had the correct endorsement on their pilot’s licenses to serve as co-pilot on that plane, and the younger Dutton had only about 175 hours of flying experience. Aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti, who investigated the crashes for both the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration, said he believes the lack of an experienced co-pilot may have been a major factor in the crash.
“This plane needs two trained pilots, and if things go wrong and you don’t have a trained pilot, then bad things can happen,” said Guzzetti. “The plane could have landed safely if there had been two qualified pilots in the lead.”
The report said that a thrust reverser indicator light was not working before take-off, but after the plane entered the air, the pilot’s altimeter and some other instruments were not working on the left side of the cockpit. After this report said the pilot temporarily transferred control to the co-pilot while he tried to solve the problems.
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The cause of the problems with the plane is unclear at this stage of the investigation, in part because the cockpit voice recorder sometimes cut out and NTSB experts are just beginning to dig into what caused the crash. On the radio, Jack Dutton announced, “we’re having some problems here” and the cockpit recorder picked up part of the conversation between the three pilots about the issues with the plane.
John Cox, who is the CEO of Safety Operating Systems, said he thinks the problems with the instruments on the plane could have been a bigger factor in the crash than the lack of experience of the co-pilot.
“In the clouds with flight instruments failing is a serious situation,” Cox said.
But the report indicates that the pilots were able to resolve 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 found the problem but did not say what it was. At that point, the audio in the cockpit recorder returned to normal, and there was no further discussion of pre-crash instrument problems.
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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 discovered the throttle in the full forward position when they examined the wreckage. Guzzetti said that this suggests that the pilot may have realized that the plane was too low and tried to pull away and maybe even turn around.
Biffle’s wife, Cristina, and children Ryder, 5, and Emma, 14, were killed in the accident along with his friend, Craig Wadsworth.
Biffle, 55, has won more than 50 races on NASCAR’s three circuits, including 19 at the Cup level. He also won the Trucks Series championship in 2000 and the Xfinity Series title in 2002.
In 2024, Biffle was honored for his humanitarian efforts after Hurricane Helene hit the United States, even using his personal helicopter to deliver aid to flooded remote western North Carolina.
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Hundreds of people in the NASCAR community gathered at an arena in Charlotte earlier this month to honor Biffle at a public memorial service.
The jet had taken off from Statesville Regional Airport, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Charlotte about 10 minutes before it crashed while trying to return and land. Every indication is that the plane needed to land quickly due to the problems, so flying to Charlotte would not have been a good option.
The aircraft’s speed and altitude varied significantly during the short flight. At one point, the plane quickly climbed from 1,800 feet (550 meters) to 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) before descending again. Just before the crash, he was only a few hundred feet off the ground.
An unqualified copilot in that seat is a violation of FAA rules that could have led to suspended licenses for both the pilot in charge and the unqualified copilot if the agency had discovered it under normal circumstances. But the FAA may not have known about it unless someone reported it.