The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final report on a July plane crash at the Newport airport that left the pilot seriously injured and substantially damaged the aircraft.
The crash happened shortly after 1 p.m. on July 5 at Parlin Field Airport, the Valley News previously reported.
The NTSB determined the probable cause was “the pilot’s failure to attain an appropriate touchdown point, which resulted in a runway overrun,” according to the report released in August.
The pilot was making his final turn toward the airport’s 1,997-foot turf runway when “he heard another pilot report over the airport’s common traffic advisory frequency that they were on final approach to an intersecting runway,” the report states.
Investigators found that the pilot reduced his descent while communicating with the other pilot, then resumed his landing attempt. As a result, the report states, the final approach was “steeper than normal and the pilot touched down with insufficient remaining runway.”
The plane — a privately owned single-engine Ryan Navion — overran the runway and crashed into the tree line. Newport Police Chief Alex Lee said in July that “the plane went into a wooded area off the end of the runway,” and that there was no fire and no damage to the runway.
“The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mount, left wing and fuselage,” according to the report. The pilot told investigators there were “no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.”
The pilot, who was alone on board, had taken off from Dillant-Hopkins Airport in Keene, bound for Newport. Officials declined to identify him in July, and the NTSB does not name pilots in its reports.
He was airlifted by DHART to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
Parlin Field, off North Main Street, has two runways: a paved strip of nearly 4,000 feet and the shorter turf runway. Airport manager Heath Marsden said in July that the field sees about 4,000 takeoffs and landings a year, “mainly recreational aircraft, along with charter planes and those used for business.”
“That aircraft has landed on that runway before and it’s normally the smaller airplanes that would land on there,” Marsden said. Conditions that afternoon, he said, were “sunny, warm, wind was really calm.”
