1999 South Dakota Learjet 35 crash

On October 25, 1999, a chartered Learjet 35 business jet was scheduled to fly from Orlando, Florida, United States to Dallas, Texas, United States. Early in the flight, the aircraft, which was climbing to its assigned altitude on autopilot, lost cabin pressure, and all six on board were incapacitated and killed by hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the brain and body. The aircraft continued climbing past its assigned altitude, then failed to make the westward turn toward Dallas over North Florida and continued on its northwestern course, flying over the Southern and Midwestern United States for almost four hours and 1500 mi. The plane ran out of fuel over South Dakota and crashed into a field near Aberdeen after an uncontrolled descent.

The two pilots were Michael Kling and Stephanie Bellegarrigue. The four passengers on board were PGA Tour golfer Payne Stewart; his agent Robert Fraley (a former Alabama Crimson Tide football team member); Van Ardan (president of the Leader Enterprises sports management agency); and Bruce Borland, a golf architect with the Jack Nicklaus golf course design company.

Accident

Note: all times are presented in 24-hour format. Because the flight took place in both the Eastern Time zone – Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) – and the Central Time zone – Central Daylight Time (CDT) – all times are given in this article in Coordinated Universal Time (which is indicated by the time followed by the letters UTC).

Crash

The Learjet's cockpit voice recorder (CVR), which was recovered from the wreckage, contained an audio recording of the last thirty minutes of the flight. It was an older model, which recorded only thirty minutes of audio. The aircraft was not equipped with a flight data recorder. At 17:10:41 UTC, the Learjet's engines can be heard winding down on the CVR recording, indicating that the plane's fuel had been exhausted. In addition, sounds of the stick shaker and the disconnection of the autopilot can be heard. With the engines powered down, the autopilot would have attempted to maintain altitude, causing the plane's airspeed to drop until it approached stall speed, at which point the stick shaker would have automatically engaged to warn the pilot and the autopilot would have switched itself off.

At 17:11:01 UTC, the Lear began a right turn and descent. NODAK 32 remained to the west, while TULSA 13 broke away from the tanker and followed N47BA down. At 17:11:26 UTC, the NODAK 32 lead pilot reported, "The target is descending and he is doing multiple rolls, looks like he's out of control... in a severe descent, request an emergency descent to follow target." The TULSA 13 pilot reported, "It's soon to impact the ground; he is in a descending spiral."

Impact occurred approximately 17:13 UTC, or 12:13 local, after a total flight time of 3 hours, 54 minutes, with the aircraft hitting the ground at nearly supersonic speed and at an extreme angle. The Learjet crashed in South Dakota, just outside Mina in Edmunds County, on relatively flat ground and left a crater 42 ft long, 21 ft wide, and 8 ft deep. The aircraft was destroyed.