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WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday issued a report concluding that the plane crash killing all nine aboard in Ohio last year was caused by a series of "sloppiness" by pilots and their charter company.
The pilots did nott follow check lists and violated company procedures for approaching and landing at the Akron airport before the Hawker 700A crashed in an aerodynamic stall, two miles short of the Akron runway on Nov. 10, 2015, said the report. No one on the ground was hurt.
The plane descended twice as fast as company guidelines suggested, but the captain did not take the controls from the first officer who was flying even as the plane went too slow to stay aloft, investigators found.
Because of the problems with speed and altitude, company policy suggested the pilots should have aborted the landing, circled the airport and tried again, but they did not.
Their on-demand charter company, Execuflight, hadn't checked why both pilots had been fired from previous employers for training problems and gave the captain a passing grade for a failing test, according to investigators.
Execuflight "was infested with sloppiness" from the cockpit to the corporate offices, board member Robert Sumwalt said.
"There were a litany of failures involved in this accident," he said.
The board also ruled that a Federal Aviation Administration inspector failed to catch inadequate pilot training, maintenance and operations at the company, the board ruled, according to a USA Today report.
