Cause of Toledo Bend SR22 plane crash still subject of speculation
By SHARON KERR Staff Writer

An investigator from U. S. Specialty Insurance Co. spent last Wednesday on Lake Toledo Bend trying to recover more clues into the plane crash of April 22, according to Sabine County Chief Deputy Tony Miller, but little more is known at this time.

On a Tuesday afternoon April 22, startled fishermen reported that a small plane popped out of the clouds, sputtered and dove nosefirst into the lake, according to accounts from first responders.

The Jasper County Emergency Corps put two search boats on the lake before dark, and resumed the search with underwater cameras the next day, April 23. They saw a wide debris field scattered across the lake bottom in murky water ranging from 25 - 40 feet deep.

Other boats recovered floating pieces of the plane and some human remains and personal belongings.

The plane was a Cirrus SR-22 en route from Tupelo, MS, to Hooks Airport near Houston. The pilot was Daniel McIntire, 54, of Humble, and passengers George McFadden, 67, of New York and Heather Hardin, 24, of Louisiana.

The Cirrus SR 22 is one of the best-selling high-performance single engine planes in its class at a cost of $350,000 to more than $400,000. It is best known for being equipped with CAPS (Cirrus Aircraft Parachute System), an emergency parachute that can be activated by the pilot or passenger to set the plane down gently in an emergency, but there is no indication that the parachute was activated in the Toledo Bend crash.

However, according to a report in the New York Post April 25, the plane had already been reported overdue before the crash, and air traffic controllers had been trying to make radio contact with anyone in the plane for more than an hour.

The plane had been flying in a straight line at an altitude of 10,000 before the crash and could have been on autopilot all that time. At a point on the flight path estimated to be where Toledo Bend is, the pilot would have needed to switch tanks or refuel, according to a pilot.

The New York Post interviewed William Waldock, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, who said it was possible that the pilot and passengers "lost consciousness because of carbon monoxide seeping into the plane cabin."

McFadden was the brother of New York fashion designer Mary McFadden, who, in an odd coincidence, lived across from where baseball pitcher Cory Lidle's SR22 crashed into a Manhattan apartment building in 2006.

A web search of "Cirrus SR22 plane crash" turns up several fatal crashes in the last few years, such as:

Dr. Chester Mayo, a descendant of founders of the Mayo clinic, died along with his son and two other teenagers in a Nov. 2007 crash near Faribault, MN.

Pro-race car driver Lucho DeCastro, his wife and children died while flying from Los Angeles to Phoenix in June 2005.

One of the most recent cases, other than the Toledo Bend crash, involved an experienced pilot, Dean William Carson, who crashed his Cirrus SR22 into Butler Peak in California.

Friends said "health and weather are not likely causes" because he was in good health, there was no fog or wind, and there was good visibility that day.

The wreckage of his plane was scattered across 200 yards of rugged terrain, according to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin on April 10, which also reported the National Transportation Safety Board investigation will take at least six month before preliminary findings will be available.