A plane that went down just outside of Athens last month had mechanical issues for days leading up to the deadly crash, the National Transportation Safety Board revealed in a preliminary report Tuesday night.
A private pilot was the only person on board the single-engine Piper PA-24 when it crashed near Athens-Ben Epps Airport the evening of May 11, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Athens-Clarke County Coroner Sonny Wilson identified the pilot as Robert Blevins, a 55-year-old Texas business owner, the Athens Banner-Herald reported.
Blevins reported engine problems as he was landing the small aircraft, the NTSB report indicated. About a mile before the plane reached the airport’s runway, he declared an emergency and told air traffic controllers he’d lost all engine power.
The crash left a 50-foot trail of debris as it flew into a wooded residential area about three-quarters of a mile from the end of the runway, NTSB investigators said.
The federal agency’s report showed it wasn’t the plane’s first sign of trouble.
A flight instructor told investigators Blevins had recently purchased the plane and wanted to fly it with an instructor to familiarize himself with the RaJay turbocharger system before he flew home to Texas.
Two days before the crash, Blevins and the instructor flew the aircraft to altitudes of 10,000 feet, but the engine failed to develop full power and the manifold pressure was too low to start the turbo system. The instructor said when they returned to the airport, maintenance crews found a loose wire that was grounding one of the plane’s magnetos, according to the NTBS report.
The loose wire was replaced the next day, but the engine backfired on one of the subsequent flights. Maintenance teams cleaned, gapped, tested and reinstalled the spark plugs the morning of the crash, investigators said. They also adjusted the fuel mixture and made other repairs before returning the aircraft to service.
Blevins took off from the Triangle North Executive Airport in Louisburg, North Carolina, just after 4:15 the afternoon of the crash. He approached the Athens airport after a nearly 2½-hour flight and began to make his descent. Minutes later, he made his emergency call just before 7 p.m., the report stated.
