CARLINVILLE, Ill. — On a clear and sunny Sunday, Angela Anderson saw a small plane doing dips in the air. Dillon Wiser pointed to the sky to show his son the plane’s tricks. Nearby, Danette Edwards thought the maneuvers were by an aerobatics pilot or crop duster.
But the scene soon turned horrific.
The four-seater aircraft, its engine revving loudly, began a nosedive. It spiraled straight down. The wings came off and the plane broke apart before slamming into a livestock ranch 3 miles southwest of Carlinville.
It’s been one year and 10 months since the plane went down, killing the pilot and his three friends. The men were heading from Creve Coeur to Michigan on the afternoon of May 31, 2020.
People are also reading…
In the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report released this month, investigators determined that the “decision making/judgment” of the pilot, Joshua Sweers, was the probable cause of the crash.
The NTSB noted the plane was in a steep spiral dive. The steep descent was “likely an intentional action by the pilot, but for reasons that could not be determined,” the investigators said.
Sweers was no stunt pilot or crop duster, just an engineer on a trip with fraternity brothers. There is no recording of any conversations in the plane that could explain what happened.
Sweers tried to recover from that steep descent but couldn’t, the report said. The excessive speed was beyond what the plane was built for and it broke apart mid-air, the investigators said. Debris on a Macoupin County farm scattered along a path some 400 feet long.
The father of one of the passengers who died takes issue with the federal agency’s findings. Charles Shedd said reading between the lines of the report it appears federal investigators are saying the pilot may have been showing off with risky flight maneuvers.
“The NTSB is saying the dive was intentional, like a rollercoaster, ‘watch what I can do’,” Shedd told the Post-Dispatch. “But he (the pilot) wasn’t that kind of guy. He was well aware he was a novice, he knew he had his friends’ safety — their lives — in his hands.”
Sweers had about 93 hours of flight experience, 38 of those as pilot-in-command.
Killed that day were Sweers, 35, of Lansing, Michigan; and his three passengers, Daniel A. Shedd, 37, of St. Charles; Daniel Schlosser, 39, of Mount Morris, Michigan; and John S. Camilleri, 39, of Grand Island, New York.
They were in a single-engine Piper Cherokee PA 28-235 fixed wing plane. All four of the men were engineering graduates from Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. They had all belonged to the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.
Shedd, the only one with ties to the St. Louis area, grew up in Chesterfield and graduated from Parkway Central High School. Shedd worked for the Defense Contract Management Agency at Boeing, where he was an engineer.
Shedd texted his mom a photograph of the four friends, all smiles, moments before takeoff.
In the wreckage, investigators found a GoPro camera that Shedd had used to record more than five minutes of the flight. The footage they recovered showed Sweers performing a pre-takeoff checklist, making a radio transmission to enter the active runway and taking off.
The footage showed nothing unusual, and Shedd shut off the camera before the crash, the investigators said.
Another GoPro camera was mounted to the plane’s windshield, facing forward. That camera wasn’t recovered.
Witnesses reported the crash at 3:45 p.m., about 25 minutes after takeoff from Creve Coeur Airport.
According to the report, the weather was fine, experts ruled out mechanical and structural issues with the plane, and toxicology results showed no drugs in the pilot’s system.
Position data showed the plane’s route, speed and angles. Sweers did two controlled turns, not too fast, and the plane didn’t stall.
Then, at the end of one turn, the plane entered a nosedive at 63 degrees. The last data measurement showed the speed at 237 mph and the pilot was unable to pull out of it, the report said.
Every plane has a “never-exceed speed,” above which structural damage can happen. Experts say most pilots never get close to that. For this Piper, the never-exceed speed was 196 mph.
The report includes the accounts of seven people on the ground who saw the plane in a nosedive. At least three of them saw what the plane was doing before its nosedive.
Anderson, the woman who reported the plane making dips, told authorities the plane made five or six “dips” but would “come back up” each time. Then she saw it begin the nosedive.
After examining photos of the debris field, the NTSB said, “It is clear that the pilot attempted to pull out of the dive and, in doing so, reversed course.”
That maneuver “resulted in the pilot inadvertently exceeding the ultimate load factor for the airframe,” the report said. “The excessive load factor caused the separation of the wings and stabilator, and a loss of control of the airplane.”
Sweers was a project manager at audio electronics company Harman International, in charge at one point of technology in automobiles for the clients in Asia. He enjoyed skydiving, motorcycle riding and climbing buildings; he “lived every single day of his life on full throttle and arms wide open,” his obituary said.
Sweers’ mother, Georgeann Ricketts of Flushing, Michigan, told a reporter Wednesday that the agency must have missed the real cause and shouldn’t suggest her son made reckless moves.
“That is not the personality or actions of my son,” she said.
Ricketts said her son was cautious with the aircraft, built in 1964, and particular with his safety, including refusing to drink 24 hours before he planned to fly. She is raising money for a scholarship fund at Kettering University in honor of her son.
Charles Shedd of Chesterfield, the father of front-seat passenger Dan Shedd, said he doesn’t fault the NTSB, just disagrees with the findings. Shedd said the federal agency tends to blame pilots when the investigation comes up with no other cause. It’s the agency’s default finding, he argued.
“I believe they had to blame Josh,” he added. “They had no other choice. They had no other evidence.”
Shedd said he does not believe the pilot was taking risks, stressing that Sweers was a serious man engaged to be married.
“These guys were not that type,” Shedd said. “They were not risk-takers.” He later added that a more nuanced description was better: They weren’t “reckless” risk-takers, he said, meaning “they were willing to take measured risks commensurate with their abilities.”
What then does Shedd think caused the plane to go down?
“That certainly is a mystery,” he said. “I’m no more qualified to speculate than anyone else.”