WEST GARDINER – The bodies of a mother and her son were retrieved Saturday from the wooded, slush and snow-covered site where their plane crashed Friday night. The remains were taken to the medical examiners’ office in Augusta.
Meanwhile, four federal investigators with the help of nearly 70 local emergency workers and two experts from the fuselage and engine makers of the private Cessna Citation S-525, worked to secure the site and begin the arduous task of figuring out why the plane went down and burned on impact.
Killed were Jeanette Symons, 45, and her 10-year-old son, Balan.
Less than 48 hours into the investigation Jose Obregon, an air safety investigator from the Miami office of the National Transportation Safety Board, said it was too soon to say precisely what, if any, effect weather had on Friday’s tragedy.
“Basically, on an NTSB investigation we go out to the site and make sure we don’t lose any perishable evidence,” Obregon said.
Investigators were still recovering wreckage, reviewing flight logs, aircraft and air traffic control documents and recordings, he said. If needed, a closer investigation of specific locations within the crash site would be examined as would any specific components of the aircraft, Obregon said.
Investigators would likely release their preliminary findings within five to seven days. The precise cause of the mishap may not be fully known for several months.
The crash site, accessible only by snowmobile or ATV, presented challenges not only because of its remote location, but also the depth of the snow cover and the air temperatures. Obregon noted that, being from south Florida, the hardest thing for him personally was the cold. “Otherwise it’s the terrain…it’s soft, it’s wet, it’s ice,” he said.
Obregon praised the support of the local police, fire and rescue agencies including the American Red Cross, which was providing meals and beverages for investigators and support staff.
Investigators from his agency as well as the Federal Aviation Administration were expected to be on site for at least two or three more days, he said.
Obregon said he could not elaborate on what some rescue workers were describing as an impact crater of three to four feet.
“We need to look at it a little bit further, there’s soft terrain out there. There’s ice, it’s wet and anything heavy hitting something like that is going to make an indentation,” Obregon said.
He said investigators were finding parts of the aircraft that would ultimately help them determine what went wrong but couldn’t elaborate on what was being recovered. He also said it was still unclear whether the plane was equipped with a “black-box” type of device that typically records communications between the plane and the tower but also can record specific flight data.
“This is not even the second day into the investigation so we are still trying to just get enough information to put out a preliminary report,” he said.
Symons, an experienced pilot who frequently flew between her residences in San Francisco and Steamboat Springs, Colo., arrived with her son, Balan, in Maine last Saturday. The two were leaving to return to Colorado Friday night after Balan had spent the past week participating in a ski school at Sugarloaf USA.
Witnesses report seeing the plane flying very low to the ground just before impact. The crash occurred only a few minutes after take-off.
“I heard it. My son, Ben, saw it,” said Becky McFarland, who had been visiting family very near the crash site.
“You could hear a little noise. All of a sudden, there was a big, loud noise and the sky was just bright orange. You could see, it might have been metal pieces, just going up into the sky.”
The jet, which is registered to Symons, a California entrepreneur, took off from the Augusta airport at 5:45 p.m. It was bound for Lincoln Airport in Nebraska, and it was believed that Symons was piloting it, according to Jim Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration,
Symons flew regularly and had logged 14 hours and 39 minutes flying time in January. That’s about average for a private pilot, according to Rick Cloutier, manager of the Auburn Lewiston Municipal Airport. Commercial and airline pilots typically log between 80 and 100 hours per month.
According to Duncan Aviation employees in Nebraska, they were not expecting Symons, but that isn’t unusual for the airport, which serves as a filling station for many owner-operator private jets making long-distance flights.
After the plane took off, an air traffic controller in Portland was communicating with the pilot by radio and tracking the aircraft on radar, Peters said.
When the plane reached an elevation of about 3,000 feet, the pilot declared an emergency, and reported that there was a problem with the plane’s altitude indicator. The controller attempted to guide the pilot back to the Augusta airport but lost radio contact and saw the plane descend rapidly on radar, according to Peters.
Police said a debris field approximately 300 yards long was found at the scene of the wreck. Police and emergency crews from several agencies searched the area a mile into the woods off High Street before the victims were found.
“I understand there were 40 phone calls to the 911 center from neighbors hearing something, which was surprising given the weather last night,” said Kennebec County Emergency Management Agency spokesman Bob Devlin.
After people responded to the scene, “the local cell tower got hit by lightning, which didn’t help communication,” he said.
Members of the Cobbosseecontee Snowmobile Club have been helping searchers get to the scene. Club members are planning to groom a trail to the heavily wooded sloping area off High Street in West Gardiner to make it easier to access.
According to Devlin, there were no injuries on the ground. The crash site, which is about 10 miles from the airport, is not too close to any homes. “They (neighbors) did see a flash in the sky, probably the jet fuel burned off fairly quickly.”
A decontamination site also was set up near the crash area for searchers. “They’ll need to be decontaminated because of jet fuel (exposure),” Devlin said.
Peter and Wendy McKinnon live about a mile from the crash site.
Their son, Jason, 21, is a volunteer firefighter for West Gardiner and responded to the scene with his snowmobile, ferrying supplies and police officials back and forth to the scene. Saturday morning, he reported to National Guard duty at the Augusta armory.
“He said there was just debris everywhere,” Wendy McKinnon said. He spotted a pair of ski boots in the wreckage. “Obviously they were going on a winter trip.”
Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said that the department was first notified about the downed aircraft when the Federal Aviation Administration contacted it.
“The plane disappeared from the radar,” McCausland said.
McCausland said airport officials had said there had been no deicing of the plane before takeoff.
Airport officials said the plane had been parked in Augusta for several days before taking off Friday night, but no one at the airport Saturday remembered Symons flying into Augusta before last Saturday, or whether she and her son rented a car or had someone meet them there.

Staff writers Kathryn Skelton, Scott Taylor, Tony Ronzio, Judy Meyer and Scott Thistle contributed to this report.

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