NTSB: Malfunctioning flight instruments, ice likely to blame in fatal plane crash near Derby

A plane crash that killed a California traveling pastor and his longtime pilot near Derby in 2013 likely was the result of the pilot attempting to navigate icy conditions with malfunctioning flight controls, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report published last week.

The report, released Thursday, also says the pilot, 49-year-old Mitchell Morgan, knew the plane’s autopilot and some of its flight instruments were not working properly when he decided to take off from Mid-Continent Airport on Oct. 18, 2013. About 20 minutes into the flight, the plane, a twin-engine Cessna Citation 500, encountered a pocket of “supercooled large water droplets” and ice, the report says.

Morgan, it continues, likely became disoriented as he tried to maneuver and maintain control after receiving altered flight instructions from an air traffic controller.

The plane took a nosedive into a field near 95th Street South and Webb Road shortly after 10:15 a.m. The impact killed Morgan and his passenger, 72-year-old Ed Dufresne, a pastor at World Harvest Church in Murrieta, Calif. Dufresne had been in Wichita to deliver a message to a local church the night before. The pair were en route to Texas when the plane went down.

Morgan, the report says, had reported the malfunctioning equipment to a maintenance person in another state after arriving in Wichita. Maintenance personnel replaced one of the faulty instruments before the plane’s final flight, but there was no other work performed on it at that time, according to the NTSB’s report.

This story was originally published November 23, 2015 at 7:40 PM with the headline "NTSB: Malfunctioning flight instruments, ice likely to blame in fatal plane crash near Derby."