What happened
On a scheduled flight from Floyd Bennett Field Airport in New York toward Moffett Airbase in California, an aircraft operating under call sign PE-0ES was en route with a planned stop at Glenview Airport, Illinois. While cruising at 22,000 feet, the crew provided an altitude and position report to air traffic control. Shortly after this communication, the aircraft type entered a spin. The plane descended through the final cloud layer at 3,000 feet while in a right-hand turn and struck the terrain at a speed of 800 km/h with a 60° nose-down pitch. The impact caused the aircraft to disintegrate. The wreckage was located approximately seven miles northeast of Battle Creek. There were four fatalities among the crew members.
Findings
Official investigations confirmed that no in-flight fire or significant structural failure had taken place prior to the crash, noting that the airframe was only about one year old at the time of the event. Investigators noted two instances of unintelligible voice transmissions from the cockpit, which were obscured by intense high-frequency background noise. While researchers attempted computer analysis of these recordings, the cause of the accident remained undetermined. One theory suggested a sudden catastrophic event may have incapacitated the crew, with investigators considering whether a windshield failure caused rapid decompression and extreme noise levels; however, insufficient wreckage of the windshield was available to verify this hypothesis.