Altitude is Cited in 2005 Plane Crash

March 1, 2007
The National Transportation Safety Board said the crash was caused because the pilot -- with 30 years of experience in the cockpit -- failed to maintain adequate altitude.

Feb. 28 -- For the past two years, a nagging question has lingered at the Johnson County Executive Airport.

What caused a twin-engine Cessna to crash minutes after takeoff, killing five people bound from Kansas for sunny Florida on a cold, dreary Friday morning in January 2005?

"It's been kind of baffling. We couldn't figure out what caused that," said Lee Metcalfe, the Johnson County airport's executive director.

On Tuesday, Metcalfe and the rest of the community got an answer -- sort of.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the crash was caused because the pilot -- with 30 years of experience in the cockpit -- failed to maintain adequate altitude.

The safety board report doesn't address why the plane, roughly 600 pounds overweight, was too low, other than to say that altitude and low cloud cover that morning were contributing factors.

Metcalfe, a pilot for more than 30 years, said he didn't see that the report drew any meaningful conclusions. He stressed he was not an aviation expert.

The crash killed everyone aboard: pilot James L. Kingston, 60, of Stilwell in Johnson County; Kevin W. Holzer, 50, of Stilwell; Lewis Bradley Smith, 73, of Kansas City; and Armour D. Stephenson Jr., 49, and his wife, Shirley F. Stephenson, 46, of Lee's Summit.

An attorney for the Stephenson family as well as Holzer's widow said Tuesday he couldn't comment on the case.

Family members of the five have filed several lawsuits in Kansas and Missouri. Those lawsuits allege negligence against companies and mechanics who previously worked on the plane. They also claim that a left turbine on the plane failed before the crash.

Safety board investigators, however, found nothing abnormal that would have prevented normal operation of the airplane, the report said.

Three on board the plane -- Kingston, Holzer and Smith -- were headed to Florida for a golfing trip. Kingston agreed to take along the Stephensons, who were headed on a cruise to the Bahamas, a gift from the church where they were co-pastors.

After the crash, the Stephensons' son, Armour Stephenson III, became a leader of that church, Parkway Baptist in Kansas City.

"Their vision is yet alive and we're just walking in those footsteps and fulfilling the things the Lord showed them," Stephenson said, who next month celebrates his first anniversary as pastor. "I think about my parents all day every day."

Other family members of crash victims could not be reached for comment.

An aviation expert reached Tuesday thinks Kingston, using instruments to navigate, may have become distracted after taking off about 9:30 a.m.

Signs of a problem can be traced to the fact that the plane leveled off at 1,000 feet above the ground when it should have been climbing after takeoff, said Richard Stone, past president of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators.

"That's not the normal way you fly an airplane if you're making a departure from an airport," Stone said.

"You never level off because you want to get safe clearance off the ground."

Stone said that points to a distraction. "Something else was going on," said Stone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot.

As Kingston took off that morning, air traffic controllers told him to climb to 3,000 feet. But radar data showed that he got to about 2,000 feet before making a right turn on his assigned heading.

Witnesses said the plane appeared level as it came out of an overcast sky, but then dipped its nose and right wing downward before crashing into a retaining wall at the home of former Kansas City Royals pitcher Jason Grimsley.

Kingston had been involved in two other plane crashes.

National Transportation Safety Board records show that Kingston had been in a Cessna 421C crash before -- in 1996 near St. Petersburg, Fla.

The plane hit the ground after the right engine failed. Kingston suffered only minor injuries. The board determined that the plane's starter adapter had not been installed correctly.

He also was involved in a crash in 1999 at the Lee's Summit Airport when the right brake locked on a plane causing it to leave the runway after landing, board records show. The landing gear struck a raised concrete taxiway causing damage to the left engine and the propeller.

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