DARTMOUTH, Mass. (AP) – The brother of a prominent Pennsylvania attorney who was among three killed in a plane crash near the New Bedford Regional Airport questioned Saturday whether insufficient runway lighting contributed to the accident.
Peter J. Karoly, 53, of Bethlehem and his wife, Dr. Lauren Angstadt, 54, died Friday night along with their pilot of the single engine plane, according to Karoly’s brother, lawyer John Karoly Jr. of Allentown, Pa.
Peter Karoly was a lawyer in Allentown who also was known as an owner of the Allentown Ambassadors, a now-defunct minor-league baseball team. Angstadt was an Allentown endodontist – a specialist in root canal treatment. The couple had no children.
John Karoly identified the pilot as Michael Milot of Germansville, Pa., and said that Milot worked full-time for his brother’s firm.
The plane, a six-seat Socata TBM-700, missed its first approach while trying to make an instruments-only landing in the foggy weather.
It crashed on the second approach, said Jim Peters, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman. Robert J. Gretz, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator, said the plane hit the ground nose-first. Rescuers couldn’t comb the wreckage or recover the victims’ bodies until Saturday morning because of weather and safety concerns. Debris was scattered no more than 60 feet from the crash site.
The plane’s remnants were moved to an airport hanger in New Bedford. It could take from six months to a year for the NTSB to determine the cause. Sets of runway lights used by pilots relying on their instruments to land were off at the time of the crash.
John Karoly said that was a major factor in the accident.
Earlier this month, the city of New Bedford asked the FAA to turn the lights back on, and had obtained an emergency permit from the local conservation commission to do so because the runway is on protected wetlands, Peters said.
But the lights remained off Friday because the work clearing the vegetation hadn’t been completed, Peters said.
“The plane could not find the runway on its heading because there were no lights,” John Karoly said.
But Peters said the runway was safe and that lights that line the edges of the runway, as well as lights that run down the center, were on.
He said the additional lights, located in the center of the runway and about 40 feet off both edges, have been off since August because they were blocked by thick vegetation. Pilots were notified about the situation in a “notice to airmen,” he said.
Peters said the lights that were off are intended as “an additional aid.”
“If you were to ask an expert pilot with an instrument rating who knows these kinds of runways, he or she would tell you (that) you can make an instrument landing without those lights,” Peters said.
Peters said “it could very well be” that NTSB investigators say the lack of lights played a role in the crash.
Gretz said it was too early to tell.
“At this point, it could be anything,” he said. “It’s day one of an investigation.”
The plane left Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown at about 2 p.m. Friday, flew into Boston, and departed Logan International Airport at 7:17 p.m. for New Bedford, where the three planned to have dinner with a business associate. The crash was about 7:44 p.m., John Karoly said.
The Karoly family issued a statement thanking friends and neighbors.
“The tragic and sudden loss of my brother Peter and his wife Lauren has devastated our very close, loving family,” John Karoly said in a statement.
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