A Hendrick Motorsports plane carrying two pilots and eight other passengers crashed into a mountain Sunday afternoon en route to the Subway 500 NASCAR Nextel Cup race in Virginia.

Ten people were confirmed dead, including four relatives of Hendrick Motorsports CEO Rick Hendrick: His son Ricky Hendrick, his brother John Hendrick, and John's twin daughters Jennifer and Kimberly. John, 53, was the president of Hendrick Motorsports. Ricky owned a Busch Series NASCAR team and ran Performance Honda of Pineville, a motorcycle dealership.

Also killed in the crash were five Hendrick Motorsports employees: General Manager Jeff Turner, Randy Dorton, the chief of the company's engine program, engineer Scott Latham and company pilots Dick Tracey and Liz Morrison. The 10th victim was Joe Jackson, an executive with DuPont, which sponsored Jeff Gordon's Hendrick Motorsports car.

The plane had left the Concord Regional Airport, where the company has a hangar, and was headed to the Martinsville, Va., airport for the race where four of the company's teams were competing.

The plane crashed into Bull Mountain, about 10 miles west of the airport, shortly after 12:30 p.m., FAA officials said.

Emergency teams in Patrick County, Va., responded, but the plane appeared to have crashed in a remote area, said Keith Holloway, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman. Holloway estimated that federal officials wouldn't be able to reach the crash site until Monday morning.

It remains unclear what caused the crash of the Beech 200 King Air plane, he said. In the past five years, 12 similar models have crashed around the world, killing their passengers, according to NTSB records.

The plane was among a fleet owned by the North Carolina motorsports company. Hendrick had four teams competing in Sunday's race with drivers Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Terry Labonte and Brian Vickers.

In 20 years of competition, Hendrick Motorsports has garnered five NASCAR Winston Cup Series (now Nextel Cup) championships, three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series titles and one NASCAR Busch Series crown, making it one of stock-car racing's premier organizations.

Rick Hendrick is just the second team owner in NASCAR's modern era to earn more than 100 Cup Series victories.

More than 400 employees call Hendrick Motorsports home, and day-to-day activities include management of HendrickMotorsports.com, the 15,000-square-foot museum and team store, marketing, public relations, sponsor services, licensing, show cars, merchandising, and much more.

 

Didnt their team actually win the race in martinsville?

 

I was surprised to hear it was a King Air 200 (BE20) - one of the safest planes in the sky. Two turbine engines with props bolted on (turboprop), SUPER reliable and safe. Foggy morning, notoriously dangerous airport to land at. Other racers were commenting that they always get nervous landing there.

They probably didn't realize the terrain was coming up on them and hit the ground on landing. Such a shame that not everyone has the new TWAS system. It was only recently mandated, and many planes are still getting it. It is required for almost all part 135 (charter) planes by this coming spring, I think.

Such a sad day, my heart goes out to the families of all the people in that crash.

 

I was surprised to hear it was a King Air 200 (BE20) - one of the safest planes in the sky.

You were?
Word has it 12 others like it have crashed

 

I don't think that quote was accurate. I would almost guarantee when the cause of the crash finally comes out it was pilot error, especially since there were no transmissions from the cockpit indicating any problems on approach.

Generally speaking, most plane crashes are pilot error (except the very big jets, although it happens there as well). In very light business jets and turboprops, it is almost always pilot error because they have redundant systems to take over if something fails. Unfortunately, pilots are human and get tired, or distracted, etc. Or maybe they just don't see that mountain obscured by cloud cover. A VFR (non-instrument) flight can go bad in a hurry if fog or cloud cover obscures terrain.

That is a very nice, $7 milion dollar aircraft with turbine engines that simply don't fail very often. And it will fly just fine on one if it needed to.

Usually what happens on charter flights is that the pilots get overworked. It's a super sought after job, and many pilots break their own rules to keep owners happy. Add that to a foggy morning at an airport that is already said to be real tricky to land at, and you have a disaster waiting to happen.

I've flown a BE20 (King Air 200) - one of the nicest planes around.

Pilot error would make the crash even more needless. (where is could have been avoided, as opposed to an in flight fire or something).