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The pilot of a US plane that crashed and killed all 11 on board had a history of taking unnecessary risks and pushing the limits of his abilities to provide passengers with an exciting ride, witnesses told US federal officials.
The dossier released Wednesday contains reports from a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the 2019 plane crash that became one of the deadliest civil aviation accidents in the United States over the past decade.
The NTSB reports did not provide a specific cause for the accident. They noticed that two paratroopers boarded the flight at the last minute. There were also reports describing repairs made to the plane after a previous accident in 2016.
Witnesses and other pilots, including Anthony “Tony” Skinner, a former pilot for the same parachute company, who said the crash pilot, Jerome Renck, sometimes flew aggressively and took risks he was not trained for.
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Skinner said “Renck would lean hard and pounce aggressively on exits, and he had seen him do that as an ‘exciting ride’ for passengers,” the report says. ”The pilot was also doing negative G dives for the ‘weightless’ effect for fun, but he heard some jumpers complaining.
Skinner said that Renck, a French national who was the sole pilot of the company at the time of the accident, “told him that he had done cartwheels on the crashed plane, but not with the passengers,” according to the report.
A tandem skydiving instructor for the skydiving operation, Brian Wagner, said he liked Renck’s piloting.
“He said he liked flying with Jerome as he seemed to fly consistently and predictably on every flight, which he liked in a pilot,” the report says. “He always expected a ‘pretty rough exit’, and all flights had the same predictable flight path.”
Caleb Jones / AP
Parachute center near Dillingham Airfield in Waialua, Hawaii.
Paratroopers’ accounts from previous flights were also included in the report.
“The takeoff was a bit spicy for my liking, but for the most part under control,” said skydiver Stephen Hatzistefanidis. “It definitely tipped it a bit hard in a high-speed turn at a seemingly low altitude.”
A witness, Sayar Kuchenski, had been skydiving on the plane and flew in it the day before the accident.
In an email to the NTSB, Kuchenski said that on previous flights “the pilot would sometimes take off at an extremely steep angle and an aggressive climb right after leaving the runway. Presumably this was done for fun to intentionally create a high gravity environment. “
Dennis Oda / AP
The public file contains reports of an investigation by the National Aviation and Transportation Administration into the accident.
Kuchenski asked the pilot not to fly that way because the engines could stall, “which would be unrecoverable so close to the ground.”
She said Renck respected her opinion and no longer flew that way while she was on board.
A maintenance report said that Robert Seladis, a mechanic working on the aircraft, was interviewed a few days after the accident, but then stopped communicating with investigators.
Records from the Federal Aviation Administration showed that their certificates were revoked in 2005 due to the falsification of records on two aircraft, according to the report. It was later allowed to be re-examined and a new certificate was issued in 2015.
Seladis, a contractor, was in possession of the plane’s log books, and attempts to retrieve them were also unsuccessful, according to the report.
Seladis could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
The plane, which crashed off the north shore of Oahu on June 21, 2019, was the fourth of five skydiving trips scheduled that day for the plane and pilot.
The plane tipped over and then reversed shortly after leaving the small coastal airport and crashed head-on alongside a highway. Nobody survived. It was the deadliest civil aviation accident in the US since a 2011 crash at an air show in Nevada killed 10 people.
In 2016, the aircraft sustained substantial damage to its tail section while carrying paratroopers over Northern California. The plane took a dive and the paratroopers struggled to get out of the plane. No one died.
Repairs were made to get the plane back into operation before it was shipped to Hawaii.
The plane was being operated by the Oahu Parachute Center. The company did not have the proper permits to take people skydiving at the time of the accident, according to documents released by the state.
State reports said the Oahu Parachute Center was “not up to date” with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs in April 2019. It was also not a registered tenant of the state land it occupied at the airport.
Business owner George Rivera received a permit in 2010 for a business under a different name, Hawaii Parachute Center, which allowed parachute and rigging repairs but not skydiving operations. An attempt to reach Rivera was unsuccessful Wednesday.
Rivera left the airport about 90 minutes before the fatal accident. He told investigators it was possible the pilot had performed aggressive takeoff maneuvers to show off when he was not there.
In the wake of the accident, the NTSB asked the FAA to toughen its regulations governing parachute operations.
