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The search for answers began today in a huge field of debris near the Rock Springs-Sweetwater County Airport.
Federal investigators arrived on scene in Wyoming today to figure out why two planes collided in mid-air. Three men died Sunday afternoon when the planes exploded in flames and fell out of the sky.
The investigation will likely take days of work at the scene, and months of analysis, before final answers are in. But it couldn't come too soon for a grieving family wondering whose error led to the tragedy.
Investigators traveled across miles of rugged desert to reach the scene. They began trying to put together the pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle.
"We're in our initial stages of the investigation. We have a lot of work ahead of us. There are literally thousands of pieces that we are trying to locate, document and explore," said Joshua Cawthra, with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Witnesses saw the two planes explode like a bomb and rain down on an area a mile long.
Two doctors were killed in a Cirrus aircraft approaching the Rock Springs airport: Michael Downey of Columbus, Ohio, and Ralph Otto of Wilmette, Ill.
The other plane was piloted for practice by David Knezovich of Rock Springs. He left behind four sons and daughters and 14 grandchildren.
"He was a great guy. He helped a lot of people, done a lot of things for everybody around here," his daughter Deanann said.
Somewhere in that vast debris field are electronic recording devices that should give investigators some clues as to what went wrong.
"Our information is that the Cirrus out of Montana was in radio contact with a regional air traffic controller in Salt Lake City routinely just prior to the collision," said Detective Dick Blust, with the Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office.
The sheriff's office describes Knezovich as a student pilot, but his children say he was a veteran flier doing a checkout flight to restore his lapsed flying license.
"I don't know what went wrong. I don't know if it was somebody in control tower. Somebody should have known somebody was in somebody's air path. And my personal opinion, I think it was control tower," Knezovich's son Anthony said.
"It's a tragedy right now, and we're out to find possible safety issues that we can make a future safety recommendations on to prevent future tragedies from happening," Cawthra said.
Kabrina Palmer, also one of Knezovich's daughters, said, "My dad always had dreams, and every dream he had he succeeded. And ever since he was 3 years old, his dream was to fly an airplane, and he did that."
The two Midwest doctors who died have been described by those who know them as very safe pilots. Ironically, flight safety is a major emphasis of their group, the Flying Physicians Association. Many of their associates are anxious to know what went wrong.
E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com
E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
