MORRIS COUNTY — The takeoff from Teterboro Airport seemed uneventful.
Behind the controls of the single-engine, turbo-prop plane, according to friends, was Jeffrey F. Buckalew, who was flying his family — his wife Corinne, their two children and their dog — along with a colleague on a trip down to Georgia for a combination business meeting and early holiday getaway.
Within minutes, FAA officials said, there was a brief discussion with ground controllers about icing conditions ahead and an expected climb to a higher altitude. A garbled transmission followed. And then, 14 minutes after takeoff Tuesday morning, the plane dropped off radar.
On the ground, the first call came in at 10:04 a.m. Witnesses in Morris Township described a revving noise high above, and a loud whistling sound, like an incoming shell. Then a tremendous crash.
All five aboard the small plane were killed when the aircraft tumbled out of control, broke apart in mid-air, and hurtled to earth, spreading a half-mile-long swath of charred, mangled wreckage and bodies across Interstate 287 and beyond.
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The falling debris barely missed a pickup truck traveling in the southbound lane, but authorities said no vehicles were hit on the busy highway, which would have been jammed with morning rush-hour commuters just an hour or two earlier.
"It was a very traumatic accident," New Jersey State Police Lt. Stephen Jones said.
The victims were not immediately identified by authorities. However, the plane was registered to Buckalew and officials at Greenhill & Co., the Manhattan investment bank where he worked. The company reported that he and his wife, both 45, their children, Jackson and Meriwether, all of New York City, and former New Jersey resident Rakesh Chawla, 36, who also worked at the firm, were apparently on board. The two children were in first and fifth grade.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, said the 6-year-old Socata TBM-700 — a French-made, low-wing, six- to seven-seat aircraft powered by a jet turbine driving a single propeller — entered an uncontrolled spin, falling from an altitude of 17,500 feet.
"It’s too early to tell if it was mechanical or something the pilot did," NTSB air safety investigator Robert Gretz said at a late-afternoon news conference.
Gretz later told reporters a hand-held global position system device had been recovered at the scene, though it was still unclear whether it was turned on at the time of the crash and what, if anything, it might reveal.
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