NTSB to release report on Wellstone crash on Friday

Updated: 02-21-2003 07:42:16 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) - The National Transportation Safety Board plans to release more information about the October plane crash that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone.

The report, to be released Friday, will contain new facts, but it won't be final and won't contain conclusions, said NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm. He added that "months of work" remain before a final determination on what caused the crash.

In a news release, the NTSB said, "The information to be released is factual in nature and does not provide any analysis."

The Oct. 25 crash also killed Sheila Wellstone, Marcia Wellstone Markuson, Mary McEvoy, Tom Lapic, Will McLaughlin and pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess.

The report is expected to be several hundred pages.

The NTSB said it will contain investigative reports in the areas of operations and human performance, aircraft performance, air traffic control, meteorology, survival factors and power plants.

Reports on airworthiness and airplane maintenance records will be released at later dates.

According to initial NTSB reports, the chartered King Air A100 was on approach to Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport when it drifted off course and went down steeply, without a distress call, two miles from the runway.