Paul Wellstone - Death

Death

On October 25, 2002, Wellstone, along with seven others, died in an airplane crash in northern Minnesota, at approximately 10:22 a.m. He was 58 years old. The other victims were his wife, Sheila; one of his three children, Marcia; the two pilots, his driver, and two campaign staffers. The airplane was en route to Eveleth, where Wellstone was to attend the funeral of Martin Rukavina, a steelworker whose son Tom Rukavina served in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Wellstone decided to go to the funeral instead of a rally and fundraiser in Minneapolis attended by Mondale and fellow Senator Ted Kennedy. He was to debate Norm Coleman in Duluth, Minnesota, that same night.

The Beechcraft King Air A100 airplane crashed into dense forest about two miles from the Eveleth airport, while operating under instrument flight rules. It had no flight data recorders. Autopsy toxicology results on both pilots were negative for drug or alcohol use. Icing, though widely reported on in following days, was considered and eventually rejected as a significant factor in the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) judged that while cloud cover might have prevented the flight crew from seeing the airport, icing did not affect the airplane's performance during the descent.

FBI agents who were initially sent to help recover debris investigated possible foul play involved with the crash. After a few days, the agents ruled out the possibility that the crash was not accidental, but not before following several criminal leads involving death threats. Wellstone had been receiving death threats since he took office, forcing the FBI to tap his phone so it could locate angry callers. Information regarding the FBI's involvement in investigating Wellstone's death was not publicly released until October 2010. Government documents also indicated that the FBI had been following Wellstone before he became a senator, and included records dating back as far as his arrest at a 1970 anti-war protest.

The NTSB later determined that the likely cause of the accident was "the flight crew's failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which led to an aerodynamic stall from which they did not recover." The final two radar readings detected the airplane traveling at or just below its predicted stall speed given conditions at the time of the accident. Aviation experts speculated the pilots might have lost situational awareness because they were lost and looking for the airport. They had been off course for several minutes and "clicked on" the runway lights, something not usually done in good visibility. There was a problem with the airport's navigational beacon (VOR). According to Minnesota Public Radio:

The day after the crash, FAA pilots tested the VOR. The inspection pilots reported to the NTSB that when they flew the approach without their automatic pilot engaged, the VOR repeatedly brought them about a mile south of the airport. In one written statement an FAA pilot told the NTSB that the signal guided him one to two miles left or south of the runway. That's the same direction Wellstone's plane was heading when it crashed.

Other pilots at the charter company told NTSB that pilot Richard Conry and first officer (co-pilot) Michael Guess both displayed below average flying skills. Conry had a well-known tendency to allow co-pilots to take over all functions of the aircraft as if they were the sole pilot during flights. After the crash, three copilots told of occasions in which they had to take control of the aircraft away from Conry. After one of those incidents, only three days before the crash, the co-pilot (not Guess) had urged Conry to retire. In a post-accident interview Timothy Cooney, Conroy's longtime friend and fellow aviator, said that Conroy expressed concerns about flying King Airs as late as April 2001, eighteen months prior to the accident. Significant discrepancies were also found in the captain's flight logs in the course of the post-accident investigation indicating he had probably greatly exaggerated his flying experience, most of which had been accrued before a 11 year hiatus from flying due to a fraud conviction and poor eyesight. In 2001, he had Lasik surgery but it only improved his vision to 20/50, 20/30 and he was required by FAA regulations to wear corrective lenses; however, the pilot's wife and Timothy Cooney said he did not wear lenses after the surgery. The coroner who examined his badly burned body was unable to determine if he was wearing contacts at the time of the crash.

Guess was cited by co-workers as having to be consistently reminded to keep his hand on the throttle and maintain airspeed during approaches. He had two previous piloting jobs: one with Skydive Hutchinson as a pilot (1988–1989), and another with Northwest Airlines as a trainee instructor (1999). However, he was dismissed from both jobs for lack of ability. Conry's widow told the NTSB that her husband told her “the other pilots thought Guess was not a good pilot.”