The pilot of the Cessna Citation that crashed into Lake Erie in December had received his type rating in the jet three weeks before the accident, according to the NTSB’s preliminary report. The 2012 CJ4, owned and flown by Columbus, Ohio, businessman John T. Fleming, crashed on the night of Dec. 29 shortly after takeoff from Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport, killing Fleming, his wife and two sons, a neighbor and his daughter. The NTSB’s initial findings, released Thursday, show Fleming, a private pilot who also held Citation Mustang and helicopter ratings, passed his CE-525S (single pilot) checkride on Dec. 8 after training in the accident aircraft. He then completed a FlightSafety International recurrent training course in a simulator on Dec. 17.
The group was returning to Columbus after attending a Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game. Fleming’s communications with ATC at KBKL show he obtained an IFR clearance for a route to Ohio State University Airport at 10:47 p.m. local time and received a taxi clearance to Runway 24R. About ten minutes later, the pilot received a takeoff clearance with instructions to turn right to a heading of 330 degrees and maintain 2,000 feet, according to the NTSB report. He did not respond to a handoff to Cleveland Departure. ADS-B data indicates the CJ4 began a right turn just past the departure end of the runway to a heading of 310 degrees and climbed to about 2,925 feet. “About 5 seconds later, the airplane entered a descending right turn until the final data point” less than two miles northwest of the airport, the report said. The aircraft remained missing for days after the crash as rough weather hampered search efforts. Investigators continue to examine remains and pieces of the wreckage that have been recovered from the lake, and the cockpit voice recorder is under analysis.
