Rockefeller Crash

Rockefeller billionaire's son dead after single-engine plane crashes minutes after takeoff in Westchester - NY Daily News

By now we have all heard about this crash. Very sad to see this happened to anyone but due to the importance of the person who died, there is much more media attention. For the family there is sadness. For folks interested in aviation, the question is "what happened" and how can we prevent this from happening? Was there a loss of power, instrument failure, or an error in judgement? A medical condition? Of course the report will hopefully tell all but why did it have to happen?

I hope that the comments I read posted by readers of several of the articles were simply trolls and not real thoughts echoed by segments of our populations. I don't mean to swerve into political discourse, but some of these post associated with the article echoed sentiments of our current president and administration. Class envy, the Rockerfellers control the fed, he died because he was wealthy and could afford to fly, should have been flying coach like the rest of us, and other nonsensical twisted thoughts. Very sad to read these, especially if these are actually true thoughts of individuals. Below is a reply to some of these thought provoking post:

nonie brown16 hours ago
" These rich people who think they have to fly their own planes will never learn." OMG Dr. Rockefeller was certainly not one of those. He was a seasoned and smart pilot. How rude of you. Do you know how many wonderful advantages you have because of him and his family. Ever been to the N.Y. Public Library? Ever been to The Metropolitan Museum Art? Ever been to Moma? Those are a few things that " are " because of " those rich people ". Not to mention the millions of dollars that they have given to every cause you can possible think of. BIG in other words. Dr. Rockefeller was an accomplished doctor who had been with the organization, Doctor's Without Boarders for years. You should learn about people before you so ignorantly insult them.

I would imagine he could have flown in any plane, with his own pilots, but apparently he was and wanted to be an aviator. He also appeared to be a good man, who contributed to society.

"Richard Rockefeller was a doctor with a distinguished career that included a stint chairing the U.S. Advisory Board of Doctors Without Borders from 1989-2010. The doctor served as a trustee on the philanthropic Rockefeller Brothers Fund. He was recently working on PTSD treatment for wounded veterans, said Seitel."

As a passenger, I just had my second IFR flight in a Mooney 262 this weeks from Clemson, SC to Leesburg, VA KJYO in all the rain and storms. Only due to the availability of an aircraft were we allowed to see the FCA National Concours and Julie received 7 hours of IFR training to boot. It was exciting to fly through the clouds and around the cells. I was thinking of how a Meridian would be the perfect plane for this type of flight. Dependable, safe, and fast. What happened?
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I own and fly a Meridian. We are all scratching our heads on this one, which isn't unusual. Because there was no fire, we will probably learn the cause of the accident. As pilots, deep down, we many times quietly hope it was a poor decision or medical condition that would never befall us. Often it proves otherwise.

 

Given the damage I was surprised there was no fire.

 

First thought.... crash like that right after takeoff and no fire = empty fuel tanks?

 

As a casual observer passenger, I could not fathom a mistake that colossal. You would think that even the oldest Meridians would have adequate gauges and warnings on low fuel. That beings said, one could be a bit rushed to exit in bad weather. Although under control, I sort of witnessed that first hand on Thursday. We did the run up but there was a sense of urgency to get airborne, and boy are we glad we did. All red and purple on Fore Flight not too many minutes later.

 

"I don't mean to swerve into political discourse, but some of these post associated with the article echoed sentiments of our current president and administration."

The fact is that you did swerve, and in a most gratuitous and thoughtless manner, by implying that everyone who disagrees with your political point of view espouses the sort of shallow, stupid comments that you're referencing.

 

isn't there about a zillion things that can go wrong ?

i know of bunch of you fly but ,imho, these small planes seem like they crash all the time..

my buddy has a king air. i will not go up with him.

 

Juan and Juan, I'm sure he had fuel, and turbines don't crash all that often. This one is a wait and see.

 

A GIV crashed the other day at Bedford-- will you not ride in Gulfstreams either?

 

Yes, agree speculation is useless.

PURCHASE – It was supposed to be a happy trip.

Richard Rockefeller had flown his small plane from his home in Maine to Westchester on Thursday to have dinner with his father, David, who was celebrating his 99th birthday. The journey, just before Father's Day, turned tragic on Friday when the 65-year-old doctor and philanthropist took off from Westchester County Airport, about 30 miles south of the Dutchess County border, for the flight home. Less than 10 minutes later, he was killed when his plane crashed near the SUNY Purchase campus.

"It's a terrible tragedy," said family spokesman Fraser Seitel, who confirmed the death. "The family is in shock. Richard was a wonderful and cherished member of the family. He was an experienced pilot. He was a medical doctor, and it's horribly sad."

The Rockefeller estate, which includes Kykuit and David Rockefeller's Hudson Pines, is in Pocantico Hills and the family has long been one of the most prominent in Westchester.

Airport operations administrator Peter Scherrer said the plane, a Piper Meridian single-engine turboprop, took off from Runway 16 at the airport and went down at 8:08 a.m., narrowly missing a house and crashing into treetops off Cottage Avenue in Purchase. The weather was foggy and rainy. The flight had been expected to last an hour and 14 minutes.

Richard Rockefeller lived in Falmouth, Maine. According to FlightAware flight tracking service, the plane had left Portland International Jetport in Maine at 2:22 p.m. Thursday and landed at Westchester Airport at 3:41 p.m.

Rockefeller practiced as a family physician in Falmouth until 2000 and had worked on global health causes. He served as president of the Health Commons Institute, a nonprofit organization, and chairman of the U.S. Advisory Board of Doctors Without Borders, according to the Rockefeller Brothers Trust Fund website. He was married and had two grown children.

Scherrer said Rockefeller, who was the only person on board, flew out of the airport regularly. There were no reports of any other injuries.

Pilots said the weather could easily have contributed to the crash. Rocco Cipriano, a board member of the Westchester Aviation Association, said the low cloud ceiling would make recovery from a problem difficult. He said procedures at Westchester County Airport would require the aircraft taking off from Runway 16 to climb 800 feet and turn right.

Cipriano said the weather conditions were not ideal.

"If that engine quit and you're 1,000 feet in the air and you look out, you know what you're seeing? Nothing. You're seeing nothing but white," he said. The Mamaroneck resident mostly flies Cessna Skyhawks and owns an aviation marketing consulting business.

Scherrer, the operations administrator, said that judging from the wreckage, the plane appeared to have followed those procedures. He also said that there was no indication that Rockefeller issued a "mayday" or radioed that there was any kind of problem.

Harrison Police Chief Anthony Marraccini said debris from the plane was spread over several hundred feet and jet fuel was splattered over much of the crash site. He said Rockefeller's body was found about 10 feet from a large piece of wreckage that included the cockpit. The body was removed by the Westchester Medical Examiner's Office shortly before noon.

"It was lucky there was no fire," Marraccini said. "There are some very large pine trees that could have ignited very easily."

A Piper Meridian is about 30 feet long, about 11 feet high with a 43-foot wingspan and carries 170 gallons of fuel. They retail beginning about $2.2 million and seat six. The turboprop allows it to fly higher and faster than a piston-engine plane.

"It's not a cheap aircraft," Cipriano said. "It's for the one-percenter."

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are expected to head up the crash investigation.

The airport closed after the crash but flights resumed at 9:45 a.m., Scherrer said.

Staff writers Richard Liebson, Randi Weiner, Ken Valenti, Jorge Fitz-Gibbon and Theresa Juva-Brown contributed to this report.

Comments on the death of Dr. Richard Rockefeller from philanthropic organizations he was involved in.

- "Richard gave so much of his life to support Doctors Without Borders," said Dr. Deane Marchbein, MD, president of Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontiers-USA. "He made so many vital contributions that have helped Doctors Without Borders provide independent medical humanitarian assistance to millions of patients in over 70 countries. The entire Doctors Without Borders family extends its profound condolences to Richard's family. We are devastated by his loss."

Rockefeller was instrumental in founding Doctors Without Borders in the United States and served the organization in a number of capacities since 1989.

- Tim Glidden, President of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, a conservation organiation, said the group was "deeply saddened by the news of Richard Rockefeller's passing. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.

"Richard's passion for the coast of Maine was a central part of his entire life," Glidden said. "He followed his mother's footsteps in making Maine Coast Heritage Trust a place to put that passion into action. We are eternally grateful for his many contributions to the land conservation movement in Maine and across the world."

Richard served on MCHT's board and council continuously from 1989 – 2014 and served as board chair from 2000 – 2006.

 

A very sad event, especially for the family on what was to be a Fathers' Day reunion. The only silver lining is that no one else was on board, and that there were no casualties on the ground. I hope that the cause can be determined.

 

It was raining cats and dogs that morning

 

Commercial planes go down all the time. Ever watch the news?

You can't make a judgement like this with no background knowledge.

 

uhuh. commercial planes go down as frequently as these small planes and people die ?

please enlighten us to the last deadly commercial passenger jet crash in the USA ?

i show it's been almost 4 years.

how many single engine planes crash deaths since ?

 

didn't the owner of the philly enquirer (?) die in a crash two weeks ago along with 8 others ?

 

Yes, that was the Gulfstream accident I mentioned a few posts up.

Also, FYI, Asiana Airlines crashed that 777 at SFO less than a year ago... UPS crashed an Airbus in Birmingham last August, US Airways collapsed a nose gear (not fatal) in the last year. Things happen.

 

How many died on the Malaysia crash?

How many have died in small planes in the last year?

More people died last year in their cars than have ever died in the history of aviation.

What does "single engine" have to do with anything? Take the "training flights" out of the statistics and it changes things a lot. You need to get your facts straight. Please post up your statistics and lets debate them because you don't know what you're taking about.

The reason you feel the way you do is every plane crash makes the news. If every car crash made the news the news would never end. Plane crashes make the news because it's a fantastic and amazing way to die.

 

Yeah its fantastic and amzing way to die, but. Given the number of small plane filghts to their accident rate its pretty high.

On the other hand, if I take plane crashes to number of journeys, as opposed to miles traveled no plane is really as safe as the airlines would like us to think.

There are lots of ways to look at this. Another is that planes out of westchester so seldom succumb, and high profile owners too, that it makes the news, as opposed to the
plethora of car accidents in the area every day.

But then the puzzle here is we have an "experienced pilot" and adactor crashing, which makes people nervous because we understand pilot inexperience, but how does a really eperienced person make mistakes that are so grave. Or is it a mechanical issue.

Based on the weather that mornign I am going to SPECULATE that there was a weather related structural breakup or spacial disoreintation.

I still would rather be at the controls of my own meridian that going like a sheep strapped to a seat in a tube with someone I have never seen battling it out up front, but that is just me.

 

NHTSA data shows commercial flights account for 3% of fatalities according to my google search. that leaves 97% for the kennedys of the world.

i am not arguing u shouldnt fly or driving a car is statistically safer. just saying these small planes seem to fall out of the sky.

 

"Flight control panels used to lift off may have been locked in place on the Gulfstream jet carrying sports-franchise mogul Lewis Katz when it raced off a runway and crashed May 31, according to investigators.

The controls, known as elevators, were in position to hold the plane’s nose down and prevent it from flying, according to the aircraft data recorder, the National Transportation Safety Board said today in an update posted on its website. Katz and six others died as the plane crashed and caught fire."

 

If so, that's reminiscent of the crash which caused the prototype B-17 to crash on takeoff and caused Boeing to lose a bomber competition.

 

US airlines are very, very safe-- that's for sure. The track record of business aviation in turbine aircraft flown by professional pilots is also very good- not quite as good as US mainline carriers, but close.

It is true that owner-flown general aviation is considerably less safe.

Take your buddy with the King Air. If he has a professional crew, you shouldn't think twice about flying with him. If he flies it himself, you might want to do a bit more due diligence... but even that is vastly safer than if someone offers to take you somewhere in their Cirrus.

Like everything else in life, it's all about risk management. In every case, including taking a trip in someone's Cirrus, the odds of something happening are quite low.

 

With the increase in population worldwide and the increase in the means of mobility there are more incidents and accidents. New technology has allowed more people to become drivers and pilots and the figures that record and compare accidents and fatalities can be sliced through data in many directions. Results can be manipulated to show anything desired by the analyst so I don't pay much attention to it. I do pay CLOSE attention to the attitude, judgement , and skill of those with whom I fly and many times the mix doesn't balance. I have flown with people who had much better skill than I but lacked the attitude of responsibility that a safe pilot must have. I flew (once) with a guy who knew all the regs and ground school learning but he had the worst flying skills I have ever seen. I had to take the airplane away from him when was trying to land halfway in the rough and straddling the runway marker lights. I flew for a long time with someone whose lack of mature judgement was overcome by the need to show off. He eventually woke up after two near misses and an injury to a passenger. You can tell what kind of pilot you are flying with by the way he approaches his tasks before flight and soon after lift off.
Anyway, to get off the soapbox. Listen to Bob Hoover and look at what he has done safely over the years . He said that he stayed within his skill level and never pushed the envelope and always respected the airplane. His skills are far above the norm but he stayed within his boundaries.
Don't become obsessed with numbers and publicity when there are more people flying more airplanes and driving more cars. There is bound to more crashes and besides, life is always fatal.

 

Great post, I just wish I had come to the conclusion sooner, that life is fatal...and the longer you wait to realize this, the less useful time in the hour glass. I love aviation on the GA level. It saves time, and is damn fun to boot. There is nothing like a birds eye view and to NOT be in the traffic. Although just a passenger at this point, I plan to get my GA wings in the future.

 

"If it's your time to go, it's your time to go." ----Ronnie Van Zant before he stepped on the Lynrd Skynrd plane that ran out of gas.

RIP Mr. Rockefeller...

Personally, I hate small planes. I have been on a G-5 maybe 4 times and still don't like it. I have had a number of freinds go down in small planes. Two of my heroes, Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson went down in planes. Just don't like them.