NASCARs Greg Biffle wasnt flying his plane before crash that killed him and 6 others

Retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffle was not flying his own jet when it crashed last month, killing him and six others, according to a Friday report from investigators.The preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board also concluded that while an experienced pilot was at the controls, the person sitting in the right seat wasn’t qualified to be the copilot.Biffle and the retired airline pilot at the controls, Dennis Dutton, and his son Jack, who were all licensed pilots, noticed problems with gauges malfunctioning on the Cessna C550 before it crashed while trying to return to the Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina.The plane erupted into a large fire when it hit the ground about a third of a mile from the airport’s runway.The NTSB made clear that Jack Dutton was sitting in the copilot seat.Neither Jack Dutton nor Biffle had the right endorsement on their pilot’s licenses to serve as a copilot on that plane, and the younger Dutton had only about 175 hours of flying experience.Aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti, who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration, said he believes the lack of an experienced copilot may have been a key factor in the crash.“This airplane requires two trained pilots, and if things go wrong and you don’t have a trained pilot, then bad things can happen,” Guzzetti said.

“The airplane might have been able to be landed safely if there were two qualified pilots up front.”The report said that a thrust reverser indicator light wasn’t working before takeoff, but after the plane got into the air, the pilot’s altimeter and some other instruments weren’t working on the left side of the cockpit.After that the report said the pilot temporarily transferred control over to the copilot while he tried to troubleshoot the problems.The cause of the problems with the plane isn’t clear at this stage in the investigation, partly because the cockpit voice recorder c...