By: Las Vegas Now Staff
Channel 8 Eyewitness News obtained the audio tapes from the last minutes on board an experimental plane that crashed two weeks ago. You can hear the pilot telling the tower he's going in.
Three people died — the pilot and two people in the house he hit. The elderly couple was just waking up for the day.
Eyewitnesses reported hearing the plane's engine rev then cut off. You could not tell from the conversation with the tower what was happening, but you could hear the concern in the pilot's voice.
Listen to the airport's tower audio tapes
The experimental plane was in the air only one minute 48 seconds. The flight started like any other at the North Las Vegas Airport.
It was supposed to be a test flight for the engine. The NTSB says the owner of the plane added a supercharger to it. The FAA says the engine should have been re-certified to fly, but was not.
Confident that it would work, pilot Mack Murphree asked the tower to take off at about 6:26 a.m.
When a pilot requests to stay in the pattern, other pilots say that means he intended to circle and land again. According to the NTSB the experimental plane did not have the hours to legally land again at North Las Vegas.
It did not matter, the tower noticed something was wrong, “Mike kelo, do you need assistance, sir?”
The response did not answer the question, but you could hear it in the pilot's voice, “Going in. Gong in. Going in. Going in.”
The crash destroyed a home in a gated community on Lake Mead near Simmons. Jack Costa dies in the home on impact. So did the pilot Murphree. Lucy Costa survived the crash, but died later at the hospital.
At the end of the tape, a tower supervisor asked the controller what happened, “I looked up and he was not flying real good. I asked him if he needed assistance. Said he was going in.”
The NTSB doesn't have the final answer to why the plane crashed. That will come in several months.
The plane was based out of Show Low Airport east of Flagstaff, Arizona.
Email your comments to Reporter Edward Lawrence
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