FlightSafety to raze building damaged in fatal King Air crash

One year ago a twin-turboprop airplane struck the FlightSafety International building at Wichita’s airport, killing the pilot and three people inside, and injuring six others.

The cause of the Oct. 30, 2014, crash is as of yet undetermined, according to a National Transportation Safety Board official.

But the physical scars of that day can still be seen. What remains of the two-story section of the building that was struck by the airplane are two partially erect walls, an empty concrete pad, twisted metal wall studs and roof supports, and portions of blackened concrete.

About 50 yards away, a chain link fence that stands around the perimeter of the damaged building holds a makeshift memorial of four American flags, red ribbons and flowers.

But that reminder will vanish soon.

The damaged building will be razed and the land returned to the city, FlightSafety said in a statement e-mailed to The Eagle on Thursday.

“The process will begin shortly and completed as soon as possible,” the statement said. “We thank the Mayor and the members of the Wichita City Council for their support and assistance. We look forward to continuing our mutually beneficial working relationship.”

FlightSafety’s decision to raze the building comes nearly six months after the Sedgwick County Commission rejected a request to match the city in providing financial aid to help FlightSafety rebuild at the airport.

City spokesman Ken Evans said city officials have been in almost monthly conversations with FlightSafety officials since the crash.

“We value their legacy here in Wichita,” he said.

Evans said the parcel of land the damaged building sits on “is an enviable piece of property to have to market around the airport.”

FlightSafety spokesman Steve Phillips said FlightSafety has another building that is directly across from the damaged facility at the airport that it continues to use.

A ‘tragic’ day

The building is the last visible reminder of the tragic day.

FlightSafety said in the statement Thursday that its first priorities following the crash were to take care of its employees and colleagues.

Its next step was to restore the training programs that were affected by the crash, which included relocating those programs to other FlightSafety sites in the city. Even without the damaged building at the airport, its operations have been fully restored.

FlightSafety’s Wichita locations are at 1851 Airport Road, 2021 S. Eisenhower, 9721 E. Central, 1009 N. Greenwich and Two Learjet Way.

The company noted in the statement that in the past year it has installed, in Wichita, new simulators for the Beechcraft King Air 200/350, Cessna Citation Mustang, Citation CJ3-Plus and M2, Citation CJ4, and the new Citation Latitude. It also has built two simulators for Cessna Caravan aircraft that will enter service in Wichita by the end of the year.

The company said it has more than 450 employees in Wichita and has been doing business in the city for 45 years.

The crash

The crash is still fresh in the mind of Roger Xanders, chief of airport fire and police.

Xanders said his emergency crews train for all sorts of scenarios, but expect any disaster at the airport to happen at or near the runways.

“We do have in the back of our minds that they (airplanes) can strike a structure,” Xanders said. “We probably never would have thought one would hit a building in the center portion of the airport.”

The crash happened at 9:48 a.m. after pilot Mark Goldstein lifted off in the Beechcraft King Air B200 from a runway at the airport.

According to an NTSB preliminary report in November 2014, Goldstein radioed the air-traffic control tower one minute and 11 seconds after liftoff that he was declaring an emergency and had lost his left engine.

Witnesses said the airplane made a left turn after takeoff and estimated its altitude was less than 150 feet, the report said.

A witness who saw the plane from about 20 yards away said the aircraft was in a left turn as it approached the hangars east of the FlightSafety building. The wings were level as it flew west of the building and the landing gear was “down and locked,” the flaps were extended and the rudder was neutral. The right engine was at full power, the witness said. As the plane disappeared from his view, he heard the sound of an impact.

Another witness told investigators that the plane was in a gradual descending left turn. He thought the plane was going to land on the west runway, but it hit the northeast corner of the building.

That witness also said the landing gear was extended and both propellers were rotating. He said the plane’s left engine struck the building just below the roof line, followed by a section of the left wing.

When the wing struck the building, it broke off from the plane. The plane’s nose struck the building’s roof, and the aircraft slid about 20 to 30 feet before the tail section came over the top of the plane. A large explosion and fire followed.

Killed in the crash were Goldstein, 53; FlightSafety employees Jay Ferguson, 78, and Nataliya Menestrina, 48; and Russian pilot Sergey Galitskiy, 54, who was training at FlightSafety.

The two-story portion of the building that housed flight simulators was so badly damaged and unstable that it took emergency crews two days to recover all of the bodies of the victims.

An NTSB official said the investigation is ongoing.

“It usually takes 12 to 18 months before a cause is determined,” NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said.

Lawsuits

An Eagle search of Kansas and federal courts turned up one lawsuit connected to the crash.

In that lawsuit filed in Texas and first reported by The Eagle in May, FlightSafety seeks more than $1 million in damages from Dallas Airmotive, which FlightSafety alleges repaired the King Air’s PT6A-42 engines 10 days before the crash.

“Dallas Airmotive returned the engines and their subcomponents to service, representing that they were airworthy when they were not,” the lawsuit said. “This crash and Plaintiff’s damages were proximately caused by the above negligence.”

A Dallas Airmotive spokesman said in an e-mail to The Eagle that it’s the company’s policy “not to comment on active cases.”

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 7:20 PM with the headline "FlightSafety to raze building damaged in fatal King Air crash."