The search for the 40-foot Lear Jet that disappeared on Christmas Eve, 1996 continued this past weekend in Warren, N.H., after research conducted at the Thayer School of Engineering and other information narrowed down possible crash sites to Warren and two areas near Smarts Mountain.
The Thayer researchers compiled information by using statistical analyses, weather reports, the airplane's performance, eyewitness accounts and reports by the Federal Aviation Administration, according to Norman Rice '97, an Engineering student involved in the project.
Thayer Research Engineer Douglas Fraser, faculty adviser to the team, said Warren is the "area of greatest interest at the moment."
He said there was a "very credible eyewitness report" by Warren Stickney, who said he heard the crash and smelled fuel afterward. A few others backed up Stickney's report.
The team also found other evidence pointing to Warren as the crash site.
Fraser said the students combined the plane's last known flight path with the approximately 100-mile-per-hour winds on that day to assess that the plane could have flown "quite a bit farther to the northeast than the pilots realized when they were doing the approach."
He said volunteers are doing line searches, which means they walk through the woods within sight of each other, gradually ruling out areas as they progress.
The other two places where the plane may likely have crashed are in overlapping areas near Smarts Mountain and Reservoir Pond.
Fraser said the researchers generated different crashing scenarios and then applied factual data to locate possible crash sites.
According to Rice, they chose one of the areas by looking at the plane's final radar position and assuming the pilots turned right as the plane stalled.
"A turn radius was determined as a result of the stall scenario," Rice said.
He said the researchers based the second area near Smarts Mountain and Reservoir Pond on the performance of the plane throughout its flight on that day.
They plotted the radar hits throughout the flight and used the plane's average performance on its turns to determine its likely turn radius and speed as it crashed, Rice said.
Fraser said the areas near Smarts Mountain and Reservoir Pond have been searched more thoroughly than the woods around Warren, but those areas and others would be covered again if nothing turns up.
"Unfortunately there are a lot of woods out there, and this is not a big airplane," he said. "If it hits the ground at a high rate of speed, it's not going to leave much of a mark."
Rice said the three places the team chose are all about 100 square kilometers in size.
Wayfarer Aviation, Inc., the company which sponsored the missing jet, contacted the Thayer School last fall for a new perspective on the crash.
