NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A new report from the National Transportation Safety Board is shedding some light on what happened in the moments leading up to a plane crash that killed one person and hurt two others earlier month at the Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport.
According to the NTSB's report, the Cessna 172 "entered a steep (nose-high) pitch attitude.
The airplane began to turn left while in this nose-high attitude and reached an altitude of about 50-100 ft before it made a descending left-hand turn and impacted terrain west of the runway."
The report cites a witness who was taxing south on a taxiway when he saw the crash happen.
"The airplane reached a height of about 200 feet above the ground when the left wing stalled and dropped," the report shows. "The witness thought the instructor of the accident airplane tried to recover from the stall because the airplane’s wings leveled out momentarily before the left wing dropped again, and the airplane hit the ground on its belly. The witness described what he observed as a “power on stall.”
Viktoria Theresie Izabelle Ljungman, 23, of Williamsburg, Virginia, was one of three people on board when the plane crashed. Investigations show she was the flight instructor and a licensed commercial pilot. Ljungman was anemployee for Rick Aviation, a company partnered with Hampton University's aviation degree program.
Two 18-year-olds from Maryland, one from Hanover and the other from Bowie, were also on board at the time, according to State Police. Both were in an Aviation class at Hampton University. One of the 18-year-olds, Oluwagbohunmi Ayomide Oyebode, was the pilot and the other was a passenger.
