By Kathryn Skelton,Staff Writer

Charlie Weir, a 24-year-old pilot months away from a college aeronautics degree, had filled his car with flying manuals and left an open bottle of juice by the dash, business cards on the console.

On Thursday, he talked to his boss about a promotion. Then took his last flight.

Details emerged Friday about Weir and three Lewiston High School students who died inside a Cessna 172 on Thursday afternoon. The biggest detail of all, why the plane crashed into the side of Barker Mountain, remained a mystery.

William “Charlie” Weir had moved here from Texas in November to take what was only his second commercial pilot job at Twin Cities Air Service. He would have graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in August.

The three LHS students were among 33 Air Force Junior ROTC students at Bog Brook training facility in Gilead. They were supposed to spend the week.

Going up in the plane was their choice.

New Principal Gus LeBlanc stood outside the high school in the damp, morning rain Friday and told reporters he’d seen the students off on Monday.

“I wished them well,” he said. “Our major concern is the students and families of the students involved. Kids think they’re invincible. When something like this happens, it’s horrible.”

Weir and another pilot in a second plane, both working for Twin Cities Air, were at the Bethel Airport on Thursday, offering half-hour orientation flights to cadets: how controls work, what instruments look like.

Weir had already made one run that day.

Nate Humphrey, president of Twin Cities Air Service, said he got a call when Weir was 20 minutes late returning with his student passengers in the early afternoon.

Humphrey dispatched two planes from the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport to look for the 27-year-old Cessna and those on board.

It took would-be rescue teams hours to reach the plane once it was spotted.

When school officials got the call at 6 p.m., Superintendent Leon Levesque said they sent a bus with counselors up to return the other students. Parents were called.

“They’re just a real good group of kids,” he said. Lewiston has participated in the ROTC since 1988. It’s only had one other incident, a hazing last year, he said.

LeBlanc knew the students. Some went to Montello Elementary School, where he’d just left as principal.

“This is a tragedy for the school, this is a tragedy for the city, this is a tragedy for the families involved,” he said. “It’s really kind of unspeakable at this time.”

Weir has had his commercial pilot’s license since July 2003 and his flight instructor certificate since August 2005, according to a spokesman at the Federal Aviation Administration.

He had more than 900 hours of flight experience.

Humphrey said he pulled Weir aside Thursday to talk about his career.

“Let’s talk about your future, my boy. I look forward to promoting you.’ That’s the last time I talked to him,” Humphrey said. “He was terrific. I never, ever worried when he left with one of our planes.”

He contacted Weir’s family in New York when the plane was an hour late. Humphrey doesn’t suspect a problem with Weir or the plane.

In a crash like this, “Sometimes it’s real obvious what happened. I have absolutely no idea. For lack of a better word, it’s dumbfounding,” he added. “My deepest thoughts and prayers go out to (students’) families.”

Cessna 172s are the predominant training plane at Embry-Riddle, said Aaron Bailey, a 2004 graduate who flies for a small New England airline. A certified flight instructor, he taught at the school his senior year.

“The training is very grueling, it’s good. It really trained you in decision making and all the aspects of flight,” Bailey said.

The plane seats two in front, two in back. Back-seat passengers wear lap belts. People in the front seat wear lap belts and shoulder harnesses. “It’s tighter than riding in a four-seat car,” he said.

Weir was flying by visual flight rules – usually indicative of good weather, it meant he didn’t have to be in constant touch with air traffic control, Bailey said.

Cessnas are equipped with emergency locator transmitters that are supposed to send off a beacon signal on impact. Pilots are also trained to make a distress call on an emergency frequency when they run into trouble.

Dennis Bailey, Aaron Bailey’s uncle and a spokesman retained by Humphrey, said it doesn’t appear the beacon went off. “No one has come forward and said there was a distress signal,” he added.

Newry has been the scene of a crash before. A crash on nearby Mount Will in 1992 killed a Maine state trooper and his wife.

Mountains make for tricky flying terrain.

Mike Falconeri, a bush pilot with Lake Region Air in Rangeley, said air around mountains bends, banks and stalls: “It’s basically like moving down white water on a river, except you can’t see the air.”

“We try to stress in flying over the mountains, especially when you get the hot weather, it cuts (the plane’s) performance down,” he said. Air gets thinner in warm weather, affecting the movement of air over the wings, through the propellers and into the engine.

“Your plane isn’t going to climb the way it usually would,” he added.

Lake Region Air had been organizing a mountain awareness course even before Thursday’s accident.

Richard Northcott, an aspiring pilot and student of Weir’s, stood at the start of Daisy Bryant Road in Newry Friday looking up toward Barker Mountain.

He too said the winds of the region were well respected by local pilots and Weir was well aware of them.

“I’ve never seen in my life, winds anything like what this canyon can produce,” Northcott said.

He spent a lot of time in a small plane with Weir over the last year and had gotten to know him well, Northcott said.

“He was my instructor,” Northcott said. “I just don’t understand it because I’ve flown with him. He’s a good pilot.”

Just a final review flight short of his pilot’s license, Northcott struggled to hold back his emotions as he talked about his friend and the region’s notorious winds. But he also wouldn’t speculate on what role, if any, the wind played in the crash.

“I don’t know,” Northcott said. “God only knows.”

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