Wiggins Airways pilots in fatal Maine crash were on training flight

LITCHFIELD, MAINE – The two Wiggins Airways pilots who died in an airplane crash Tuesday night in Maine were on a training run, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator said in a brief news conference Wednesday afternoon.

The twin-engine Beechcraft C-99 turboprop was configured for cargo, but had none on board. Both pilots had access to the controls, Ralph Hicks, the investigator, said.

The airplane belongs to Wiggins Airways, Manchester, NH-based cargo hauler that flies to 12 states and transports for UPS and FedEx. It makes regular flights between Manchester-Boston Regional Airport and Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport, where the flight took off at 5:09 p.m. Tuesday.

“We are filled with sorrow at the passing of our flight crew members,” Wiggins Airways president Donna Nixon said in a statement on the Manchester company’s website. “The identities of the pilots will not be released out of respect to their families and friends. Our focus is on supporting their families and our employees through this difficult time.” Wiggins Airways leases the plan from UAS Transervices Inc. in Florida.

Hicks said no information is available yet on what caused the crash. He said that there is no black box on an airplane that size that can give an indication of what happened, and the pilots had not been in contact with air control at Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport, from where the plane had taken off, before the crash.

The airplane crashed at 5:40 p.m., 31 minutes after it took off, in a rural area less than a mile from the grass airfield runway in Wales, Maine, it was headed to.

Hicks said the wreckage is in a path about 200 yards long and 50 feet wide, and that the descent was “fairly steep” at an angle of 25 degrees. There is no evidence of a fire.

The investigation is being led by the NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration. Locally, the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office is in charge, with an assist from the Maine State Police

The Kennebec County Sherrif’s Office confirmed Wednesday morning that both people on board the plane died in the crash.

“As we continue our work on the incident in Litchfield, please be patient with our response time for non-emergency calls for service throughout the county,” Sheriff Ken Mason said in a Facebook post. “This scene is very large and will take two to three days to mitigate the issue properly.”

The cargo plane made regular trips between MHT and the Auburn airport, according to tracking information on flightaware.com.

Hicks said that in the coming days, the wreckage will be examined and toxicology tests will be done on the remains of the two pilots.

The airplane Tuesday initially flew the same path it took Monday night to return to Manchester, heading southwest over Sebago Lake. It then looped back toward Auburn, descending to 531 feet and slowing to 140 mph feet as it neared the airport, reaching Auburn nine minutes before the crash. The airplane then picked up speed and altitude as it headed northeast, toward Wales. It was at 2,975 feet and traveling 214 mph when it was last tracked, at 5:40.56 p.m., according to according flightaware.com tracking.

The plane had flown 109 miles and had been in the air for 31 minutes.

Area residents who called 911 reported seeing the plane go down and hearing the explosion.

The Wales airfield, in Ridge Road in that town, and the nearby area where the airplane crashed, is mostly farmland, woods and small lakes.

Wales, and the crash site, are about halfway between Lewiston-Auburn and the state capital, Augusta.

The plane had arrived in Lewiston from the Manchester-Boston Airport at 8:06 a.m. Tuesday after a 30-minute flight. The airplane’s last previous flight was Monday was from Manchester to Auburn, taking off at 6:35 p.m., landing at 7:04 p.m., then returning to Manchester at 7:33 p.m. and landing at 8 p.m.