Investigators said Friday that a sudden and catastrophic loss of power may have killed the two engines on a corporate plane that crashed into Lake Michigan during takeoff from Meigs Field on Thursday, killing all three people on board, including an executive for a Chicago company.
Officials of Hartmarx Corp. identified the victims as Richard Roydon Ricks, 55, president and chief operating officer of the company’s Trans-Apparel Group sportswear subsidiary, and company pilots Marc Derickson and John Powell. Their bodies were found strapped inside the wreckage of the Beech King Air 200 turboprop.
“It didn’t seem like the aircraft had enough power to get into the air,” said David Bowling, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. “So obviously we’ll be looking at the engines particularly, to see if they were producing adequate power.”
Bowling added that a cockpit voice recorder may be found in a portion of the wreckage that has already been salvaged and could aid investigators in determining what went wrong. The NTSB is also requesting the maintenance records of the aircraft from its home base in Michigan City, Ind., Bowling said.
Investigators recovered the bulk of the plane Friday but plan to continue looking for the other wreckage Saturday. Then they will try to zero in on which of the plane’s mechanical systems might have contributed to the crash, or whether pilot error may have played a role.
Friends and colleagues said Ricks was one of those lucky people who was able to combine his passion for golf with his career.
As president of Trans-Apparel Group, Hartmarx Corp.’s third-largest division, Ricks headed a $100-million unit that manufactured and sold Jack Nicklaus golfwear, among other brands. Ricks, an excellent golfer himself, got to play with Nicklaus and struck up a friendship.
Andy O’Brien, vice president of marketing for Nicklaus’ company, Golden Bear Inc. in West Palm Beach, Fla., remembered Ricks for his “welcoming warm smile.”
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The Trans-Apparel Group is headquartered in Michigan City, where the plane left at about noon Thursday to take Ricks to a company meeting in Chicago. The twin-engine plane was attempting to depart Meigs at about 8:30 p.m., bound for South Bend, Ind., when witnesses said it failed to become airborne and crashed nose-first into the lake.
Ricks, who was married and the father of three adult children, flew on the company plane frequently to Chicago and New York City, said his sister, Barbara Strauss, of Towson, Md.
“It was part of his job to travel, and he loved flying,” Strauss said. “I remember he brought the plane one time to a Notre Dame football game in South Bend.”
Strauss said Thursday’s meeting at Hartmarx ran late and Ricks’ wife, Nancy, called him from the couple’s home in Granger, Ind., suggesting that he delay the trip to South Bend.
“My sister-in-law said, `Why not spend the night in Chicago?’ but he said no,” Strauss said.
The salvage operation began Friday morning as police divers assessed the condition of the wreck.
A dozen planes were permitted to take off from Meigs on Friday morning, but the airport was closed during afternoon salvage operations, with flights diverted to Midway Airport. Meigs reopened Friday evening.
Lt. Earl Zuelke, commander of the Chicago Police Marine Unit, said the wreckage had appeared to be sitting “fairly upright,” submerged in water about 20 feet deep.
Just before noon, a barge with a reddish-brown crane arrived at the crash site, about 75 yards south of the end of Meigs’ single runway. It recovered the plane’s cockpit, fuselage, tail, right wing and right engine at 1:15 p.m.
The right wing and the tail section were barely attached. The underbelly of the plane appeared to be heavily scarred.
To extract the bodies, the aircraft had to first be laid upside down, Bowling said, adding that it has since been righted.
“After seeing the plane the way it was today, I see why we just could not rescue these people,” on Thursday night, said James Connolly, assistant deputy Chicago fire commissioner.
Officials brought the plane’s wreckage to the south ramp of Meigs. They said they had not yet recovered the plane’s left wing, left engine or either of its propellers.
NTSB investigators, who arrived at the crash scene about 10 p.m. Thursday, interviewed eyewitnesses and learned that the plane had used all 3,900 feet of runway.
“The aircraft was seen trying to get into the air,” Bowling said. “However, the aircraft went off the runway and into the lake, coming to rest at the bottom of about 22 feet of water.”
The tower operator said the plane’s pilots never called for help, Bowling said.
An inspection of the runway yielded some tire marks that might have been left by the ill-fated plane, Bowling said.
The Beech King Air 200 involved in the accident was a 1976 model, a twin-engine turboprop with 850 horsepower engines that can carry eight to 15 passengers and crew, according to the manufacturer, Raytheon Aircraft Co., in Wichita, Kan.
“It’s a very highly regarded airplane. . . . One of the most highly used turboprops in the world,” said Thomas B. Haines, editor of the Airline Owners and Pilots Association magazine. “For years it was backbone of the corporate fleet, when it comes to turboprops at least.”
In July, another Beech King Air 200 had just taken off from an airport about 40 miles north of Detroit when it crashed, killing 10. A NTSB spokesman said no conclusions have been reached in that case, and cautioned against drawing comparisons between that crash and Thursday’s.
Thursday’s crash was not the first in the airspace surrounding Meigs.
About 15 months ago, another privately owned twin-engined aircraft, a Cessna 340A, took off from Meigs and failed to become airborne, crashing into Lake Michigan about 200 feet from the field. One person died in that Aug. 1, 1998, accident. Although the NTSB has yet to issue a probable cause finding, the final report by NTSB investigators strongly suggests pilot error in the 1998 crash.