ASPEN, Colo. — Weather conditions were so bad that a landing should not have been attempted by a charter jet that crashed, killing all 18 people aboard, the lead investigator into the accident said Saturday.
"Absolutely not," said Al Dickinson, head of the National Transportation Safety Board team examining the crash, when asked if a landing should have been tried.
Carol Carmody, the National Transportation Safety Board's acting chairwoman, said three planes trying to land before the plane that crashed had been forced to abort approaches. One missed two approaches. Only one of the three managed to land.
The plane carrying nine NTSB investigators to Aspen the next day also missed approaches before landing, said NTSB spokesman Terry Williams.
The National Weather Service reported light snow at the time of the crash; visibility dropped from 10 miles to less than 2 miles in about 20 minutes just before the plane went down.
The Aspen-Pitkin County Airport is tricky to land at even on clear days. Its single runway is surrounded by mountains that force approaching aircraft to make steep descents.
"It's one of the most difficult airports because of the terrain, the mountainous surroundings," said Tim Jackson, a political lobbyist and pilot who was in Aspen at the time of the crash. "In pilot language, it's not very forgiving."
It was that complexity that had led the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a notice just two days before the crash saying that planes should not be allowed to make an instrument landing at the airport at night, Carmody said.
The Gulfstream III, with 15 passengers and 3 crew members, had approached the airport on instruments on Thursday night when it crashed near the runway.
Carmody said pilots leaving other airports for Aspen had been notified against night instrument landings but that controllers at the Aspen airport had not been and were not warning incoming pilots. Carmody said she did not know why the notice had not reached the Aspen tower personnel.
Carmody said that the crew of the plane had received the notice to pilots, or NOTAM, in California before takeoff, and that the conditions apparently meant the pilot should not have been cleared for an instrument approach.
"I find it troubling, no question," Carmody said. "I find it interesting that the flight service station in California had the NOTAM and the airport affected did not."
After the accident, the FAA issued a new notice against night instrument landings at Aspen. Carmody said there may have been some confusion about the earlier notice because it was not worded clearly.
According to Dickinson, the notice came after an FAA official flew into the airport on a routine flight check and decided its standards should be changed because of the mountainous terrain.
Carmody said investigators would now look into FAA procedures for distributing the notices to try to learn why the Aspen airport wasn't using it.
Controllers also did not turn away a plane carrying Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, which landed at the airport a little over an hour after the crash.
Investigators said they still did not know why the executive jet went down during its final approach, but weather was one of the main areas they were looking into.
"This weather was changing a lot and it was changing rapidly. We're trying to get a more precise picture of what was going on during those few minutes" before the crash, Carmody said.
Investigators have concluded that there was no engine failure or engine fire, Carmody said.
Meanwhile Saturday, families of the 18 dead brought flowers to the site where the jet went down in a fireball.
Police briefly closed Colorado Rt. 82 so relatives could view the area. The busy highway is just feet from where the plane slammed into a hillside around 7 p.m. Thursday night.
About 30 family members arrived in a bus and stood on a knoll about 50 feet away from the wreckage of the plane, huddled in small groups. Some hugged, while one woman sat on a concrete divider, her face buried in her hands.
Erik Grosof, from the office of family affairs for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the relatives had been warned that viewing the site would be difficult because many items, like shoes, clothing, and luggage belonging to the victims had not been collected.
The relatives left after about 20 minutes, many looking over their shoulders to catch a last glimpse of the plane.
Carmody said the plane's left wing hit the ground first, moments after radio transmissions indicated that the runway lights were on and the pilot saw the landing strip. No distress calls were reported.
"Fifty-five seconds after the hour, the pilot said 'Yes, I have the runway in sight,' and that was the last transmission from the pilot," Carmody said.
Roman Kaplansky, the brother of victim Eugene Kaplansky, said the group was going up to Aspen for a three-day weekend. Financier Robert New, 36, and his business partner Mario Aguilar were paying for the brief vacation.
Also on board was a friend of the Kaplanskys, Ori Greenberg, a filmmaker. His short film "Havoc" had been presented at the 2001 New York International Short Film Festival.
Earlier Saturday, a team from the Colorado State Patrol's hazardous materials unit, dressed in powder-blue suits and face masks, examined a pile of debris. Officials from NTSB studied what appeared to be the remains of the instrument panel.
Efforts to determine the cause were hampered because there was no flight data recorder aboard the plane.
Avjet Corp., which managed and maintained the Gulfstream, said plane's captain, Bob Frisbie, regularly flew to Aspen and had 10,000 hours of flight time.