Last week, a prominent attorney from Washington, D.C., who was connected to both the Obama and Clinton administrations, died shortly after a trip on a corporate jet that experienced severe turbulence. Officials believe that the stability issues are likely to blame for the accident.
Dana Hyde. 55. was identified by Connecticut State Police after a plane she was on made an emergency landing Friday afternoon at Bradley International Airport, near Hartford, Connecticut.
“On 03/03/2023, at approximately 3:49 PM, Connecticut State Troopers responded to a medical assist call at Bradley International Airport. One patient was subsequently transported to an area hospital via ambulance,” a Connecticut State Police spokesperson told the Daily Mail. “Our agency is assisting as needed; however, the NTSB and the FBI are investigating the facts and circumstances surrounding this incident. For further information please contact those agencies directly.”
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement to the New York Post that “investigators are now looking at a reported trim issue that occurred prior to the inflight upset.”
The agency will “analyze information from the flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder and other sources of information like weather data” to further determine the cause, it said in a statement. A preliminary report is expected in a few weeks.
Hyde was injured during severe turbulence and shortly after arrival at Hartford’s Saint Francis Medical Center was pronounced dead. Hyde was one of just five people aboard the flight, which took off from Keene, New Hampshire, and was intended to land in Leesburg, Virginia, when it started experiencing the turbulence above New England.
The Bombardier Challenger 300 aircraft on which she died is owned by the Missouri-based internet service provider Conexon, the company said. The two crew members and two other passengers, who were reportedly her husband Jonathan Chambers, one of their two children, and the head of Conexon, are being interviewed by investigators. No one else was injured in the incident.
“We can confirm that the aircraft was owned by Conexon and that Dana Hyde was the wife of Conexon partner Jonathan Chambers,” company spokesperson Abby Carere said in an email Monday. “Jonathan and his son were on the flight also and not injured in the incident.”
Fox News reported that, while fatalities due to turbulence are very rare, last year the Federal Aviation Administration warned pilots of the same Bombardier model to be particularly careful due to previously trim issues that affected stability. This may have been the cause behind the severe turbulence and subsequent death.
The FAA had documented multiple instances where the plane nosedived as pilots tried to gain altitude and said in some cases pilots should make more-thorough inspections of the pitch trim, which is a secondary flight control.
Hyde’s LinkedIn says that, in addition to serving in the Clinton Administration as the special assistant to the president for Cabinet Affairs, she served as a counsel on the 9/11 commission and as the association director of general government programs of the Office of Management and Budget under the Obama administration.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.
