Cause of fatal Franklin County plane crash may not be known for a year or more
It will be about a year before the National Transportation Safety Board determines what caused the crash of a small plane in Franklin County on Friday that killed all three people aboard, according to an agency spokesman.
The NTSB investigates about 2,000 accidents a year involving all types of transportation, including railroads and pipelines. It’s not uncommon for the independent federal board to take a year or more to announce its findings.
NTSB investigators are still gathering information from the plane and the crash scene in Franklin County and will release a preliminary report on the basic facts of the crash in 7 to 10 days, spokesman Terry Williams said Monday. That report will not speculate on the cause of the crash, Williams said.
The single-engine Cessna C-182 crashed into a creek that leads into Clifton Pond about two miles south of Triangle North Executive Airport at about 7:20 p.m. Friday. The pilot, Brian Sjostedt, his girlfriend Jessica Kenny and her friend Allison Forsythe died in the crash.
They were headed to Hilton Head, S.C., where a friend said Sjostedt kept a boat. It was a flight Sjostedt had made many times, Zack T. Medford said.
Sjostedt, who worked as a Raleigh police officer from 1998 to 2005, learned to fly at the Henderson-Oxford Airport in Granville County and passed his private pilot’s check in 2013, said Paul Hesse, his instructor. Hesse said Sjostedt was a good pilot and an experienced plane owner.
This story was originally published March 4, 2019 at 1:31 PM with the headline "Cause of fatal Franklin County plane crash may not be known for a year or more."
