Emergency declared before fatal plane crash at Treasure Coast International Airport
ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Shortly before a plane crash during a training flight that killed the instructor, the instructor took control of the aircraft from the pilot and declared an emergency, a recently-released National Transportation Safety Board report states.
She continued to turn the twin-engine Piper PA-44-180 back toward the Treasure Coast International Airport to try to land, but there was “‘no airspeed and no engine thrust,’” the preliminary NTSB report states. The report appears to rely at least in part on an account from the pilot who survived.
The airplane stalled and hit the ground in the early afternoon March 30 crash at the airport west of U.S. 1 in northern St. Lucie County.
A St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office report about the incident identified the flight instructor who died as Valentina Guillen, 22, and the student pilot as The Toan Vo, 19.
However, Roxanne Palmer, director of academic affairs at Aviator College of Aeronautical Science & Technology at the airport, identified the instructor who died as Maria Valentina Guillen, 22, of Argentina, and the student as Toan The Vo, 19, of Vietnam.
The four-page NTSB report states the pilot was training for a multi-engine rating, and the two “practiced single-engine emergency procedures.”
“These procedures included shutting down and feathering the right engine. They returned to the airport and performed a simulated single-engine instrument ‘low’ approach to runway 10R,” the report states. “To simulate the engine failure, thrust on the right engine was reduced to idle. The left engine was operated normally.”
The private pilot said at one point “he brought both throttles full forward to go-around,” but reported no thrust from the engines.
The instructor took control of the aircraft, declared an emergency and tried to land on runway 14. The plane stalled and hit the ground.
A witness reported seeing the plane “in a ‘moderate’ right bank turn at a ‘slow speed heading in his direction,’” the report states.
“The airplane appeared to stall, rolled right, inverted, and impacted the ground,” the report states. “The witness said the engine power ‘sounded normal for this aircraft type at the time of the stall.’”
A witness in the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office report reported the plane “was making its approach to the runway, when the aircraft suddenly fell from the sky, causing the aircraft to nosedive into the runway.”
Maintenance records show an annual inspection on the plane and engines was done the day before the crash, the NTSB report states.
Final NTSB crash reports can take more than a year to complete.
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Will Greenlee is a breaking news reporter for TCPalm. Follow Will on X @OffTheBeatTweet or reach him by phone at 772-267-7926. E-mail him at will.greenlee@tcpalm.com.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Emergency declared by instructor before deadly plane crash in SLC
