Greg Biffle Crash Update | What We Know So Far

Some remarkable new information now has been released about the crash of Greg Biffle's Cessna Citation 550 just out of sight of Statesville, North Carolina The NTSB now has gotten in front of the camera two times over the weekend to give us briefings and details about that Tragic incident what we know so far is this seven people on board so far have perished in that crash Three of those people were pilots, had held pilots licenses, and I'm going to talk about those pilots licenses. In fact, I'm going

to show you the pilots license of the three. And only one of those three was qualified or typewrited, as they say, on the Cessna 550. So to be clear, the NTSB has not come out with who the pilot at the controls was precisely, but there was only one qualified. And I'll lay all that out for you. I want to go back and do a review here real quickly of what happened in this very short incident. Just less than 10 minutes airborne. Something dramatic went wrong with that airplane shortly after liftoff. They come back around and let me show you the ADS-B data.

Now, they take off a runway 10 out of Statesville. They start a left-hand turn. They get up to about 1,200 feet above ground level. At some point in that part of the flight, they're gonna start raising the flaps and cleaning up the airplane.

They begin to accelerate. They get to 197 knots, and then something the airplane. They begin to accelerate, they get to 197 knots, and then something goes wrong. They stop their climb and they start to descend, and it's a rather steep descent. They get down to about 500 feet above the ground, then they kind of slowly climb back up, then there's another steeper climb. As they start, a left hand turned back to the airport. This is not in their flight plan at all. This airplane at this point should be three,

four, five minutes into the flight, climbing out, passing 10,000 feet on their way down to Bradenton, Florida, where they were going to go to that event. So they're coming back to the airport. There's another steep descent. There's another steep climb. They come back to the airport. It looks like they set up for runway 10, the same runway they took off from. The weather at the time is marginal VFR. It's kind of coming and going. They're sort of in and out of the clouds. They break off the approach to runway 10 for some reason, start what we call a teardrop back to

runway 28. That's really no problem since there were no winds that day. It was calm so they could land on any runway. This is also an uncontrolled airfield, so it's not like the tower has to clear them. All they have to do is clear themselves. The NTSB told us that the airplane was fully configured, meaning that the landing gear was down and the landing lights were on. When on approach to runway 28, the airplane got so low that it struck one of the approach light stanchions. That's what caused the event

where they crashed into the ground. And you can then see after that, the fireball. I'm gonna show you the video. That's the moment of impact of this flight. And that's the review up to this point. Now, the NTSB has gotten in front of the camera,

as I said, two times to talk about what happens. They've talked about what did happen, and then there's a lot that they didn't say as well. There's a history I'm going to share with you of the Cessna Citation 550. There have been some incidents, and I'm going to go over a few of those with you. One of them, the fourth one, is remarkably similar to this one. And then, how does the NTSB get to the bottom of what happened in an accident like this? Well, it's very scientific the

way they do it. One of the things that they told us in front of the camera was that there was no flight data recorder, no black box for this flight. There was a cockpit voice recorder. That's different. And so how do they recreate an accident when they don't have a black box recorder? Well, it's a little bit more nuanced than if they do have one. It's helpful to have one, but they don't need it to put the whole thing back together. And I'll explain why to you.

All right, let's take a look now at the aerial view of the crash site the day after and Take a look at what we can see and what we can't see All right This all gets six you can see there the burned-out hull of the airplane the NTSB investigators now taking a look The cockpit is there's some parts of it remaining What we see from this video is this. It's what they call four points.

First thing they look at at a crash site is, can they account for all four points? What are those? The nose, the tail, and the end of both wings. And the NTSB said they can account for all four points in this crash. Clearly, the fire afterwards burned the aircraft down to just a bunch of ash. But there is enough here that they can begin to take a look at the engines. Was it an engine failure? Was it some sort of flight control failure? And one of the things they said at this latest briefing was that they've retrieved the Garmin

flight system from the airplane. Now that's really, really important. The Garmin flight system, if they can retrieve data from it, will work kind of in place of a flight data recorder. Now it's not the same device, it's not designed to survive a 300G impact and then get information out of it. It's just how they fly the airplane. But it does record all of the data and it will give investigators a look at what they were doing, airspeeds, altitudes, commands that the pilot was giving the airplane, all of that stuff,

if they can retrieve the data from it. All of those things have little SIM cards in them, and if that SIM card was intact or they can retrieve the data from it, there's going to be a wealth of information there. Now, how does the NTSB look at an investigation? We're gonna follow the exact format that they do here today. Number one, they look at the weather at the time, then they look at the pilots, then they take a look at the aircraft itself,

and you can see the picture of the aircraft that they're taking a look at right now. And then they look at historical events, similar events in the past that looked like this to glean all of that information, put it all together, and come up with what they think was the most likely thing that happened here. So here's what we do know. There were three qualified pilots aboard the airplane

that day. Only one was type rated in the Cessna Citation 550. Now we don't know who was at the controls, but only one should have been at the controls, and his name was Dennis Dutton. Dennis is a retired Delta captain. He's now 67 or he was 67 years old at the time of the crash and he had a long career, a wonderful career at Delta and he is most likely who was at the controls of that aircraft. If he wasn't there, that's another issue for another

day. But let's take a look at his pilot's license. I've got a copy of it right here. His pilot's license shows all the airplanes that he was type rated on. So he was type rated on the A320, 330, the 350, several Boeing aircraft, the 737, 757. And then you see right down here on the second row, the ACE500. That is a Cessna 500 series, a Cessna Citation 500 series. Now, down at the bottom of his license is a very important thing. It says under limits, CE500 second in command required. That means he was not allowed to fly single piloted a Cessna Citation 500 550.

He had to have somebody that was a second in command qualified on that airplane. What we know from the other pilot licenses, and I'll show you them in a second, nobody else had a Cessna Citation 500 second in command qualification. So there wasn't one. So does that mean he was not allowed to fly this airplane? Not necessarily. He may have had a waiver to be single piloted on this aircraft. We just don't know. That's some of the information that the NTSB will give to us in the

weeks ahead. But right now we know that he was qualified on this airplane, needed a second in command, and we don't know whether he had a waiver to be single piloted or not. I will tell you that the three Cessna Citation pilots I've talked to over the weekend all told me that they would not fly a Cessna Citation single piloted. They just wouldn't do it.

That was their personal preference. Even if they had a waiver, they said they wouldn't do it. It's just a complicated airplane. There's a lot going on. That's their opinion. But again, I got that from reliable sources. Now, the other two pilots, one was his son. I think his son went by Jack. Dennis Dutton is his name. Dennis Charles Dutton. He is a student pilot. You can see here at the bottom of his license. Student pilot. He doesn't have any qualifications, no medical information yet. He was at the time training to be a licensed

pilot, and that's all the information we have about him. So it was most likely that he wasn't in the seat. The third pilot was Greg Biffle himself. Now he's the owner of the airplane and it says that Greg, his medical was up to date, 2 of 2025. Those second class medicals are good for a year, so he was due again next February. Private pilot, it says. Private pilot license, what ratings did he have?

Single engine land, single engine multi-engine land, and rotor aircraft helicopter. He had no limits, but he also didn't have any type ratings. So if he had a type rating, you would see it under ratings and it would say CE-500. He wasn't type rated on the aircraft that he owned. Presumably that's why he had Dennis Dutton on board, who was qualified to fly the airplane. Now, let's talk real briefly about the transition from a commercial airline pilot, a Delta, American, United, doesn't make any

difference, a Part 121 carrier, that's what they are, to the Part 135 or the Part 124 or the civilian general aviation world because it bears, I've got to talk about it a little bit, right? At age 65 are, by Congress, forced out of your job as a commercial pilot. That's a completely different world over there. At my airline, virtually everything other than flying the airplane was done for me. I had a dispatcher that got the flight plan. I had weather briefers that gave me the weather briefing. I had all sorts of information on my iPad.

I didn't have to lift bags and put them in an airplane. I didn't have to take care of loading passengers on an airplane or getting them off. I didn't have to do any of that. I concentrated solely on flying the airplane, and I had a magnificent team of people to back me up. Once you get out of that world and you get into the general aviation world and the Part 135s, the Part 124s, and the other parts, it's a totally different world. You're the chief cook and bottle washer. You're not only flying the airplane, you're loading the bags, you're filing the flight plan,

you're fueling the airplane, you're making sure everything is taken care of, you're getting your own weather brief. That's a completely or remarkably different world from the one that you just came out of. It doesn't mean that you're not qualified for it, it just means that you're brand new at all those things. And it's a workload increase that

you're not familiar with. People that have been in general aviation their whole lives, they're familiar with doing all of that. For them to go to a commercial airliner, that might be quite a transition. It's a transition to go from one to the other. Dennis had done that. What I'm saying is there's a lot going on when you make that transition. Now, let's talk about the NTSB briefing and what they said and what they didn't say. Here's the things that they said initially. The flight was less than 10 minutes long. We know that. Seven people were on board. Three were pilots. There was a text message sent by one of the people

on the airplane. Many of you have read about this in the news. The NTSB said the family has allowed them to say what the text message was, but not who sent it. So we don't know, we don't have verified who sent it at this point. But the text message read only two words and it said, emergency landing. So anything else you've read in the news or you've heard about, the official information from the NTSB themselves was that only two words were transmitted. Emergency landing. What could that mean? Was there an emergency on board with a

person? Or was there an emergency with the airplane? Now I think based on the flight profile of the airplane, it's reasonable to assume something was wrong with the airplane, not somebody on board. If somebody's sick on board, you're going to continue to climb out, you're going to contact ATC, you're going to get a nice instrument approach in some place, everything's going to be stabilized. This unstable turnaround and come back to the airport, most likely something was wrong with the

airplane. I'm going to give you four case studies. The fourth one, it's remarkable. All right. So the aircraft first struck the approach lights to the runway. The airplane was fully configured according to the NTSB, which means the landing gear was down and the landing lights were on when it struck that first light stanchion. It was slow and it was low. According to the NTSB investigators that were in front of the camera, they said that those lights were on the same level or actually at one point a little bit below the

surface of the runway. So they were really, really low as they were coming in. There is no flight data recorder on this aircraft, but there was a cockpit voice recorder. Now why one and not the other? Well, none of that cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder is required on this particular aircraft. It depends on what they're doing with it. And in a former life, this airframe, it's this airframe is over 40 years old.

In a former life, it was a part 135 aircraft and they required cockpit voice recorders, but not flight data recorders. So that's why it had one and not the other. Now it's owned by a civilian concern. It doesn't have to have either. But fortunately for us, it has a cockpit voice recorder. The NTSB said it's up in Washington DC right now being deciphered.

So they're trying to get the information off of it. Hopefully it will glean some really good information. This fourth scenario I have for you, the cockpit voice recorder played a huge role in that. All right, and then finally the Garmin flight system has been removed from the crash and It's it's also up in Washington DC and they're trying to get some good information from it

Okay. Now the NTSB they looked at the weather already Marginal VFR they said they looked at the three pilots so far All right, and we looked at their pilots licenses. Now, let's take a look at some of scenarios that have taken place with Cessnas over the years. And the first three, I'm going to go through kind of quickly. The first is from, it's from Pueblo, Colorado from back in February of 2005. It's a Cessna 560 that crashed, but

it's a variant of this airplane. The executive summary reads like this on February 16th, 2005, about 913 Mountain Standard Time, a Cessna Citation 560 operated by Martin Air for Circuit City Stores, remember them back in the day? Circuit City is long gone. It crashed four nautical miles east of Pueblo Memorial Airport, Pueblo, Colorado, while on an instrument landing system approach

to runway 26R. Next paragraph, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the accident was a flight crews failure to effectively monitor and maintain airspeed and comply with procedures for de-ice boot activation on the approach, which causes an aerodynamic stall from which they did not recover.

So they didn't operate the boots on the front edge of the wing properly, ice built up. It caused a aerodynamic stall because the wings just lost lift and they didn't recover from it. Contributing to the accident

was the Federal Aviation Administration's failure to establish adequate certification requirements for flight into icing conditions, which led to the inadequate stall warning margin provided by the airplane's stall warning system. This one is weather related. So the first thing they're going to look at is weather related issues. So they start there. That's kind of the low hanging fruit. I don't think

weather was a huge factor here in Statesville, although weather was moving in. And so they took off as bad weather was coming in. As they came back to the airport, were they dipping down and climbing up to get in and out of the weather? I don't know.

Maybe the cockpit voice recorder is gonna help with that. All right, but weather is the first thing that they're gonna look at. Now let's go to 1999 and up in Canada a possible mechanical issue that could take place with these Cessna 550s. The Canadian authorities wrote this while complying with a phase 5 inspection on a Cessna 2 aircraft maintenance personnel performing a control column inspection so that's the

yoke that's the the control column is the thing that the pilot uses to fly the airplane right and steer the airplane. Doing a control column inspection noted cracks on the control column bob weight support. So those are underneath the floor, but they noticed cracks on it. The maintenance organization submitted a service difficulty report. That sounds very British to me for some reason. A Service Difficulty Report that stated both left and right supports had cracks near the aft torque tube. The submitter

stated that the cracks started in the upper flange of the support and extended into the web area approximately one inch from the aft end of the upper edge of the support. Why is all of this important? Here's why. Fatigue stress damage to the balance weight supports may occur by slamming the control columns forward and aft during egress or entry into the airplane. So somebody will get in, it's a kind of a tight cockpit,

you get in there and you kind of slam the control column forward to get in. And then when you get out, you might grab it and pull back as you're stepping out of the seat. So doing that repeatedly over and over again without the control locks in place may cause cracking in these bob weights, which could cause, as they go on to say here, problems with the elevator of the aircraft. It goes on here is the probable

the possible issue with all that. Although Transport Canada is unaware of an instance of failure of this part, the potential exists for a damaged bob weight support to interfere with the operation of the elevator control system. That would be the up and down of the airplane. So they're saying, based on this, that could lead to something down the road. So they did an inspection, replaced all the ones that were cracked, and that was done back in 1999.

The next is this. This was strictly a pilot error issue, but back in 2002, May 2002, a Cessna Citation 550 was departing from, let me see where these guys are out of, it doesn't say, Oklahoma City, right, out of Oklahoma City. And during takeoff roll on runway 17L at the Wiley Post Airport at V1, and as you know that's the go, no go speed speed they have to continue to go so at V1 for them was 103 knots the pilot began to pull aft on the yoke control so as soon as you hear V1 from the computer or your co-pilot you begin to pull back he starts pulling back he's pulling back he's pulling

back nothing can't get the nose off the air ground he's looking at airspeed go I got plenty airspeed pulls back all the way and the airplane won't come off the ground. He's looking at airspeed, goes, I got plenty of airspeed, pulls back all the way and the airplane won't come off the ground. Now he's only got one choice. He can't go flying. Something's wrong with his airplane. It won't fly. He's probably up around 120 knots at this point. Yes, he was at 120 knots with full aft control input. He's got it pulled all the way into his lap and the airplane won't fly. He elected to abort the takeoff, why? He had no other choice, and pulled the power to idle and applied maximum braking upon seeing the localizer antenna

approaching the airplane at the departure end of the runway. That's why you have to go flying. You can't stop in the runway remaining, but he has to in this case because he can't get the airplane airborne, at the departure end of the runway. The pilot veered the aircraft to the right of center line. The airplane departed the runway surface and impacted the fences. Examination of the elevator trim system revealed that it was at 12 degrees out of trim in the nose down direction. Probable cause, the anomalous elevator trim system, and the pilot failure to note the improper setting prior to takeoff. That was pilot error. The nose

trim was dialed all the way down. The pilot didn't catch it. He tries to pull the airplane off the ground. It won't go flying because the nose trim is telling it to go down. What is trim? All right, all of the surfaces on the airplane, the ailerons, the rudder, and the elevators at the back are big surfaces and on all of them there is a little surface that kind of fine tunes the big surface. If you're old enough to remember old TVs that you had to fine tune or a radio that you had to fine

tune to get rid of the static, that's exactly what it is. It's fine-tuning that big surface so you're not moving that big old rudder all the time, you know, for little bitty incremental changes. So that rudder trim, and most of the trim is right here, it's right here for the pilot. Some of it's on the yoke, it's electric. They can fine-tune those bigger surfaces. The elevator trim had been dialed all the way down. The pilot didn't notice it. That's why he couldn't get the airplane off the ground. That was pilot error. Now, the one you've been waiting for. This one is an in-flight mechanical failure from back in June of 2007. It's from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It's a Cessna 550.

On June 4th, 2007, about four o'clock in the afternoon. A Cessna Citation 550 impacted Lake Michigan shortly after departure from General Mitchell International Airport, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The two pilots and four passengers were killed and the airplane was destroyed. Next paragraph. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of this accident was the pilots mismanagement of an abnormal flight control system through improper actions,

including failing to control airspeed and to prioritize control of the airplane and lack of crew coordination. So the first thing they go after always is the pilots, right? Wasn't enough crew coordination. They didn't prioritize flying the airplane. That's why in the airlines, they teach us to break the startle effect by saying, my aircraft. When you say my aircraft, that starts the flow of the pilot monitoring, now gets the checklist out and is assisting whoever it is that's flying the airplane. It sounds to me here like

they got wrapped up in the problem and they stopped flying the airplane. It goes on, contributing to the accident were Marlin Air's operational safety deficiencies, including the inadequate check rides administered by Marlin Air's chief pilot, or check airman, and the federal aviation's failure to detect and correct those deficiencies, which placed a pilot who inadequately emphasized safety in a position of company chief pilot, oof, and designated Czech airmen and placed an ill-prepared pilot in the first officer's seat.

Ouch, okay, that's kind of scathing. Next page, it goes on to talk about on the day of the accident, the pilots reported for duty at about 10 o'clock in the morning, okay. At 11 o'clock, they departed Milwaukee. The accident flight was a medical air ambulance flight under

control of the University of Michigan. Later on in the paragraph, according to the cockpit voice recorder, and here's where the CVR is important. In Greg Biffle's accident, all they've got to go on is the CVR at this point. Here's the kind of information you can get just from a CVR. The CVR, as the airplane approached Milwaukee, the first officer stated that he would request weather information from Milwaukee air traffic control personnel. And the captain replied, no, no, because if they give us

below minimums, then we're really screwed. This is an insight to what goes on in the cockpit sometimes. That's why they focused in on the pilots. You always want to get the weather. If it's below minimums, you need to go someplace else. This is sticking your head in the sand and saying, if we don't know the weather's bad, then we can shoot the approach. No, you don't. You go someplace else, alright? When the pilots were instructed to contact

air traffic control for Milwaukee, the captain reminded the first officer not to ask about the weather, all right? That gives you a little insight into what's going on with the pilots. Next page, bottom of paragraph one, the National Transportation Safety Board's review of CVR evidence showed that at about 3.57 in the afternoon, the airplane accelerated on the runway and rotated. So

they're taking off back off out of Milwaukee. About four seconds later, the captain said, positive rate, gear up, and the first officer confirmed, yup. Okay, there's been more professional crews that have flown an airplane, but it gets better, right? Hold on. That was at 34 seconds past the hour, or 5740. It says the CVR recorded the captain stating, lights off, yaw damper on, about 5751, while the first officer radioed Milwaukee controllers to advise them that the pilots were starting the

airplanes turn from the runway heading to the air traffic control assigned heading of 050. The captain said, why am I fighting the controls here? So now something's up. He's fighting the controls and he's not getting the airplane to do what he wants. That's our first indication from the CVR that something was wrong. On Greg Biffle's airplane, if they get the information off the CVR, hopefully there was some verbal acknowledgement of what the struggle was on that airplane similar to this one. It goes on. At 5757, the captain

again stated, I'm fighting the controls. As the CVR recorded the first officer stating unintelligibly, I had it on and then we don't hear anything after that. Then the captain confirmed that the first officer that the landing gear was up and instructed him to retract the flaps. So he's starting to clean up the airplane at this point. At 58.07 the captain made his third mention of an unspecified control problem stating what the expletive is going on. Right? I'm fighting the controls. So you know here that there's a control issue

on this airplane and the captain is fighting it. At 5813, the first officer asked, how's your trim set? Is that the way you want it? About 5821, the captain began to describe the control problem more specifically, stating, I'm fighting the controls. It wants to turn hard left. So now he's fighting the airplane, trying to get it to come right, and the airplane is trying to get him to go left. And the first officer again said, how's your trim down there? The captain's response, which began,

trim has nothing, and then he's cut off, was interrupted when the first officer erroneously responded to an ATC transmission intended for another aircraft. So again, you see how busy it is for both airplanes, for both pilots in that aircraft. At 5845, the CVR recorded the captain stating, something is wrong with the trim, the rudder trim. The captain questioned the altitude clearance. The first officer stated they were clear to 3,000 feet. The captain stated, all right, something is wrong with our rudders and I don't know what. At 59.04, the first officer asked the captain what he wanted to do. Then at 59.07, the first officer asked, how's that? Any better? The CVR recorded the captain stating, uh, no, uh,

we got a trim problem. And he sounded, there's a grunt. They hear, tell him we, we got to get back. We got to come back and land at 59 19. The CVR recorded the captain saying, she's rolling on me, help me help me. And the first officer responded. I am all right, and you can't get the emphasis, but I've been in an airplane that did this before. I was in a Beechcraft King Air and I'm pulling this thing to the right for all it's worth and it's wanting to go to the left. All right, I'm looking at the

trim, I'm looking at the engines, everything. The captain asked at 5924, the captain asked the first officer to pull the autopilot circuit breakers, and the first officer responded, where is it? At 5929, the CVR recorded the captain stating, tell them we got a control problem. At 5930, the first officer advised Milwaukee departure control that they had a control problem.

It goes down to the second to last paragraph. At 1626 seconds, the captain transmitted to Milwaukee, I don't know what's wrong. Then at 16.0030, the captain stated to the first officer, I don't know what's wrong. I see the airport.

Keep some unintelligible word. At 36 seconds, the CVR recorded the captain stating, you hold it. I'm gonna try to pull the circuit breaker. That's probably a fatal mistake because once you give control to the other pilot who doesn't have a feel for how much to hold in, the airplane's going to depart

briefly before he can get it under control. Beginning at 0040, the captain stated, we're not holding it. The first officer stated, I'm pulling. And at 0043, the CVR recorded the captain stating, ah, expletive. The CVR recordings ended at 00 in 45 seconds, about two tenths of a second later. That was it on that. As I read that to you, and let me be clear, that is not what happened to

Greg Biffle's flight necessarily. I'm just giving you what the NTSB will put together for their historical data at things that have gone with along with other flights since they don't have a flight data recorder off the Greg Biffle flight. They will look at all this other stuff and say, is there a history? Is there a pattern? Is there something we can glean from these other accidents that would help us to come up with the accurate cause for what took place in Statesville, North Carolina just a couple of days ago?

So all of those are the things that they will look at and they'll look at the weather. They've done that. They'll look at the pilots. We've done that. They'll look at aircraft history. We've done that. They'll look now at the aircraft itself. Even in its burned out hulk of a shell, there's still Garmin information on that airplane. They can look at the engines, they can look at the flight controls, and hopefully within a month they can come out with a preliminary report that gives us more information than we have at this point of exactly what went wrong on that ill-fated flight. It's a tragedy. We're sad beyond belief for the families.

And Greg was on with his wife and his two children, and Dennis and his son were on that flight. There's another passenger aboard this airplane as well. It's a shame. They were going down to do a benefit event, a really worthwhile event down in Florida. They never made it. It cast a shadow on that event as well, but it's just very sad and we're broken-hearted over the loss of life in this one. Hopefully this information will help mitigate any further loss of life in another accident. If there's any Cessna

Citation pilots out there listening, everybody I've talked to said it's not a good idea to try to go single piloted in a Cessna Citation pilots out there listening, everybody I've talked to said it's not a good idea to try to go single piloted in a Cessna Citation. So take that for what it's worth. There's a lot of wisdom in those words. We don't know that that's the case here, but time will tell as the NTSB comes out with more information. As soon as we get any update on this, we will bring it to you with pertinent information. But right now, you are completely up to date on what happened in the Biffle plane crash

just a couple of days ago. Well, now you know. Well, now you know. I'm Captain Steve.