Aviation experts weigh-in on possible causes of Greg Biffle plane crash

STATESVILLE, NC — Shocking video, as the plane carrying NASCAR legend Greg Biffle and his family came to a fiery halt. The flight out of Statesville Airport heading to Florida, turned around four minutes into the flight.

“Just from the preliminaries, it looks like the quick change in weather may have been a factor in the pilots decision to quickly return to the airport,”  said Zachary Gorwitz.

Gorwitz is an aviation disaster attorney in Florida. He says when a crash like this happens, investigators look at three things. The man, the machine and the weather.

“All of these three things are going to interact in different ways. How did the machine respond to the environment? How did the man respond to the machine? How did the machine respond to the pilot’s inputs?” explained Gorwitz,

The NTSB will investigate why the plane crashed and also why it turned around, just miles into the flight.

“What could have gone wrong, the most likely explanation is that the pilot was experiencing some type of mechanical failure on the flight, or something as simple as a passenger on board had some type of medical concern that they needed to address on the ground,” explained Hawker Vanguard.

Vanguard is an aviation analyst with experience flying in and out of Statesville, an airport that does not have a control tower. That means pilots must self-report their position by radio.

Vanguard doesn’t believe weather played a factor in why they turned around but says there is a good possibility it did with the emergency landing. As visibility drastically dropped and the rain picked up.

“When somebody has an emergency, they come back. The weather could have deteriorated. The pilots may not have expected that deterioration in weather, and they may not have been set up for the approach properly,” said Vanguard.