WATERFORD, Mich. -- Witnesses said engine failure may have caused a plane to crash shortly after takeoff from Oakland-Pontiac Airport, killing three pilots aboard the aircraft on a training flight.
Killed were Michael Rinke, 34, a member of a prominent Detroit family of auto dealers; Frank Cudd, a flight instructor from Batesville, Ark.; and Manfred Ostermeier of Pontiac, who was training to fly the Swearingen Merlin III plane, said Thomas Warmus of American Way Insurance of Southfield, Mich., the company that owned the craft.
'It is just unbelievable that this could happen,' Warmus said.
On Sunday, Cudd and Ostermeier were scheduled to undergo more training and Rinke wanted to accompany them to gain greater proficiency with the aircraft, said Warmus.
Rinke was general manager and part owner of Rinke Toyota in the Detroit suburb of Center Line.
Cudd was an Air Force pilot for 21 years and had been Henry Kissinger's personal pilot, said Fred Schmidt of S&S Aviation in San Antonio, Texas.
John Curd, a flight instructor, witnessed the Sunday crash while awaiting takeoff in his plane.
'There's no doubt in my mind' that one of the two engines failed, Curd said. 'I don't see how he could lose control any other way.'
Curd said the plane veered sharply to the right and went into a roll just after takeoff, then crashed and skidded more than 150 yards on a grassy strip between two runways of the airport.
If the right engine shut off, he said, the rotational force from the left engine would push the plane to the right. The plane was barely high enough for its wing to miss the ground when it went into the roll, Curd said.
'The speculation is that an engine failed and dropped a wing,' said Waterford Township Police Lt. Ron Morgan.
It appeared that when the plane hit the ground the left wing propellor was spinning while the right wing propellor was not, Morgan said.
Mort Edelstein, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the twin-engine turbo prop plane crashed about 10:17 a.m. Sunday, 35 miles northwest of Detroit.
FAA and National Transportation Safety Board investigators, who declined comment on the cause of the crash, arrived at the airport Sunday afternoon to investigate the case.
