An air traffic controller believes a pilot who died in a fatal eastern Colorado plane crash in May might have been deprived of oxygen before going down, investigators say.
An initial National Transportation Safety Board report shows the controller told the the pilot, 64-year-old John Lee Stubblefield, of Meridian, Idaho, to fly at a lower altitude after radar showed his plane making erratic movements.
Stubblefield’s single-engine Cessna P210 descended from an altitude of 17,300 feet before crashing into a Kiowa County field near the town of Sheridan Lake, the report says.
The NTSB says Stubblefield was en route to Oklahoma City when his plane went down the morning of May 18 along the Kansas state line.
The Cessna made a series of turns, climbs and descents in the opposite direction of its destination when a controller radioed to Stubblefield that he might be hypoxic, or disoriented because of the lack of oxygen at his high altitude, according to the NSTB report.
Radar showed the plane’s last altitude as 9,200 feet before it disappeared.
Two F16 jets and a B1 bomber training in the area helped emergency responders locate the crash site after the plane vanished from radar.
The plane’s landing gear was found in the retracted position, the NTSB said.
