NASCAR violated federal aviation rules when it allowed the small corporate plane back in the air on July 10, 2007, the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.
The Cessna 310 was en route from Daytona Beach to Lakeland in Florida when it crashed outside Orlando. The plane hit two homes, killing a 24-year-old law student and her 6-month-old son as well as a 4-year-old neighbor. Also killed were the NASCAR pilot and the husband of a NASCAR executive, a pilot himself.
NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said NASCAR has worked with aviation industry experts “to improve our safety management systems so as to prevent an accident like this from occurring in the future.”
Investigators said the pilot who flew that Cessna the day before the crash turned off the radar system and pulled its circuit breaker in midflight after he began smelling a burning odor. After flying safely for another hour or so, the pilot submitted an incident report to NASCAR’s maintenance division.
But NASCAR did not inspect the problem before the plane was allowed back in the air on July 10.
