Witness heard sputtering from Ontario family’s plane before Nashville crash: report [Video]

A preliminary report from U.S. authorities probing a plane crash in Tennessee that killed a family of five from Ontario said one witness heard “sputtering” and “popping” sounds from the aircraft’s engine moments before it crashed alongside a highway west of downtown Nashville.

Friday’s report from the National Transportation Safety Board described how pilot Victor Dotsenko of King Township, Ont., told a Nashville International Airport controller in a “faint transmission” that his engine had shut down.

“I’m going to be landing, I don’t know where,” said Dotsenko, according to the report.

The controller declared an emergency and cleared Dotsenko to land the plane carrying his wife and three children on a runway.

But the pilot, in his last message to the controller, said he was too far away to make it.

The report found video recordings showed the airplane descended over a residential neighbourhood and passed over the interstate highway before it crashed and burst into flames.

…