Nantucket plane crash kills 1, hurts 1

Early-morning fog blurred routine route

By Brian MacQuarrie and John Ellement, Globe Staff, 9/24/2003

NANTUCKET -- The predawn darkness was made even murkier by heavy fog yesterday, but the daily airplane hop from Hyannis to Nantucket figured to be another routine run for veteran Island Airlines pilot Dave Riggs of Rochester.

Flying with Riggs was Leslie Goodspeed, an Island Airlines office manager on Nantucket. Carried as cargo were hundreds of newspapers, for delivery to Nantucket readers.

But the conditions on the island were soup-like when Riggs descended over Nantucket Sound, shortly after his 5:06 a.m. takeoff from Barnstable Municipal Airport, and attempted an instrument landing at Nantucket Memorial Airport, where the control tower had not yet opened, officials said.

Something went wrong, and the 10-seat Cessna 402 crashed into scattered pine trees about 150 yards south of the runway. The impact ripped both people from the plane. Riggs, 59, lay dead at the scene, and Goodspeed was rushed to Nantucket Cottage Hospital with multiple fractures, officials said.

Goodspeed, 47, of Osterville, a former Continental Airlines flight attendant, later was flown by Coast Guard helicopter to Boston Medical Center, where she was listed in fair condition last night.

Fred Jaeger, the airport manager, said Riggs did not appear to be making a landing because he crashed so far from the runway. Rather, Jaeger said, Riggs might have decided on his descent that visibility was too poor to attempt a touchdown, and that disaster struck when he tried to abort the landing in a procedure called a "missed approach."

On such a maneuver, Jaeger said, "you give it power and go home." In this case, he theorized, "something happened, and instead of going home, he crashed the airplane."

Riggs had been cleared to land by a Cape Cod air traffic controller, Jaeger said.

A Nantucket airport-operations employee heard the impact, Jaeger said, and reached the scene with a fire-rescue vehicle within 10 to 12 minutes, but Riggs was dead at the site.

Through the day, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board pored over the crash area, where hundreds of newspapers -- most of them copies of The Boston Globe and The New York Times -- had been strewn about the site.

The plane did not carry a "black box," which investigators use to analyze crashes with most larger aircraft.

The tragedy cast a pall over the weathered-shingle airport terminal, where a close-knit collection of restaurant waitresses, newsstand staff, and car-rental agents described Riggs and Goodspeed as affable, respected people who always helped brighten the beginning of the day.

"This is one of the worst mornings I've had," said Diane Flaherty, a longtime waitress at the airport's Hutch's restaurant, who had known Riggs for two decades. "He was a genuinely nice guy, a pilot's pilot, and I can give no better compliment than that."

Riggs, who also was certified to fly seaplanes and helicopters, had been a flight instructor in the 1980s, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. Flaherty said Riggs often would wander into the restaurant for a cup of coffee and breakfast after delivering his cargo of newspapers, and talk shop with other pilots.

"There would be three or four other pilots sitting around. It was always aviation talk. There really wasn't much else," Flaherty said. "It would be, `How's the weather today? How's the flying?' He lived to fly."

In Rochester, Riggs and his wife, Mary, maintained a close circle of friends, said an acquaintance of the family, who asked that her name not be used.

"He was always willing to help and possessed a dry sense of humor. He liked his grown-up toys," which included three boats and a pet bobcat, the friend said.

Goodspeed commuted to Nantucket during the week to open the Island Airlines office, said her mother, Virginia Goodspeed. Her husband, Horst Genten, a builder, would follow Goodspeed to the island on a 6 a.m. flight. Yesterday, Genten was able to visit his wife at the Nantucket hospital before her transfer to Boston.

Dave Murphy, who owns the Hertz car-rental agency at the airport, said Goodspeed is uncommonly cheerful.

"She doesn't seem to lose her cool, and sometimes you get some grumpy people here" as customers, he said. "She is just a very friendly person, just a very nice person."

At Windmill Gifts in the terminal, the racks did not carry any copies of the out-of-town newspapers yesterday. Employees there sadly shook their heads when asked about the crash.

Flaherty, the longtime waitress, said Riggs greeted everybody with an upbeat attitude.

"I never heard him say anything bad about anybody. I'll always remember his smile," Flaherty said. "I just can't believe it."

Michael Rosenwald of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Bob Carroll contributed to this report.