1991 Bruno's plane crash
The 1991 Bruno's plane crash was an aviation incident which occurred on December 11, 1991 in Georgia which resulted in the deaths of all 9 people aboard.
The twin-engine Beechcraft 400 aircraft was owned by Bruno's Inc. and was being used by the top executives of the Birmingham-based $3 billion supermarket chain to conduct an annual Christmas holiday tour of its stores in Georgia and Alabama. The group had left from Birmingham for Rome, Georgia to visit a FoodMax store there at 8:30 AM, then returned to Rome's Richard B. Russell Airport for a scheduled flight to Huntsville.
The plane departed at around 9:30 AM. According to Russell Airport manager Diana Farmer the pilots called into the Federal Aviation Administration's Macon flight service center to file an instrument flight plan, but did not wait for confirmation, and took off on a visual flight plan instead. They made it only 6.5 miles before crashing into the fog-covered flank of Mount Lavender, a 1,526 foot ridge on property owned by Berry College just a 6.5 miles to the west. At 9:37 the Macon service center reported being unable to reach the crew by radio. At 10:30 the first reports came in of a fire on the mountainside.
The remains of the passengers and crew were removed from the remote site and brought to Floyd Medical Center for positive identification. Neither Ronald Bruno, president and CEO of the company, nor executive vice president Paul Garrison, were aboard the crashed plane, but had been flying to other stores during the 20-day holiday event.
The National Transportation Safety Board began its on-site investigation in December. They recovered data from a cockpit voice recorder in which pilot John Tesney can be heard telling co-pilot Rob Stamps, "We’re going to have to get away from that mountain down there pretty soon."
The NTSB faulted Tesney for his decision to take off with low visibility, and both pilots for failing "to maintain awareness of their proximity to the terrain" during the flight.
Victims
- Angelo Bruno, chairman
- Lee Bruno, vice chair
- Sam Vacarella, senior vice president of merchandise
- Edward Hyde, vice president of store operations
- Randy Paige Jr, vice president of personnel
- Karl Mollica, director of produce
- Mary Faust, senior vice president of Steiner-Bressler
- John Tesney, pilot
- Rob Stamps, co-pilot
References
- "Supermarket Chain Devastated By Crash That Kills Five Top Executives" (December 11, 1991) Associated Press
- Torpy, Bill & Kathey Alexander (December 12, 1991) "Voice on plane's radio: 'Watch out for mountain!': Team probes Rome jet crash that killed 9." The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, p. A1
- "Cockpit Transcript Shows Pilots Tried To Avoid Mountain" (March 30, 1992) Associated Press
- Pace, David (July 8, 1992) "Safety Board Blames Pilots for Corporate Jet Crash." Associated Press