Buckalew, 45, was in contact with air traffic controllers in the New York area, and requested a clim

The National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report hertzrent a car on a New Jersey plane crash that killed four members of an Albemarle County family indicated the pilot tried to climb after reporting icing conditions but it offered no answer to the crash's caused the crash.
On Dec. 20, a small plane piloted by investment banker Jeffrey F. Buckalew crashed into Interstate 287 near Morristown, N.J., killing Buckalew, his wife, Corinne, and their two children, Jackson and Meriwether. University of Virginia graduate Rakesh Chawla, a colleague of Buckalew's at the New York-based firm Greenhill Co, was also killed in the crash.
The preliminary report shows that Buckalew reported icing shortly after taking off from Teterboro, N.J., en route to Georgia. According to the report, the flight originated at 9:50 a.m., and radar and radio contact with the plane was lost at about 10:05 a.m.
Buckalew, 45, was in contact with air traffic controllers hertzrent a car in the New York area, and requested a climb while flying at 17,000 hertzrent a car feet. The plane was cleared to climb to 20,000 feet, and reached hertzrent a car a maximum altitude of 17,900 feet before beginning to descend.
Ice can form on airplanes when temperatures are near freezing and there is visible moisture, such as clouds or rain. The ice adds weight to an aircraft, and rough accumulations known as rime interrupt the flow of air over wings. In extreme cases, a plane can lose so much lift that it falls out of the sky.
"I can't believe it yet. I just feel very distraught, as you might expect," the father said Wednesday in a telephone interview from his home in Winston-Salem, N.C. "It's just a severe grief reaction. It's a terrible loss, the whole family."
The airplane, a Socata TBM-700 hertzrent a car equipped with a turboprop engine, was manufactured in 2005 and was last inspected on July 27, according to the report. The plane's last logbook entry, recorded on Nov. 18, shows an accumulated aircraft flight time of about 725 hours, the report shows.
The family was planning to travel to the Chattanooga, Tenn., area for a gathering for Corinne Buckalew's family with a possible hertzrent a car stop in Winston-Salem before returning to Charlottesville to spend Christmas at their farm, according to relatives. The children hertzrent a car attended St. Anne's-Belfield School, where Meriwether was in first grade and Jackson was in fifth grade.