NTSB Investigators will be on scene in suburban Chicago today in hopes of determining what caused the crash of a ROYAL AIR FREIGHT Learjet 35 yesterday afternoon. Flight 988 was on Scheduled Cargo Service from Pontiac/Oakland County, Michigan, to Chicago Executive Airport, in Wheeling, Illinois, when it crashed on approach at 1:30pm. According to media reports, the aircraft went down without warning while on finals, killing both Pilots onboard. The Learjet crashed into the Des Plaines River in a forest preserve. Flight 988 had departed Michigan around 1:00pm, and had planned to stop in Chicago to pick up freight, before continuing on to Atlanta, Georgia. Authorities offered no initial theories about what caused the crash. The NTSB indicated its probe would focus on the plane. A veteran commercial Pilot who flew into Chicago Executive Airport shortly after the accident, believes the crash showed all the signs of a stall, the loss of lift that keeps a plane airborne. "When they go in nose down, that's a classic stall spin. There's almost no other option," he said. The stall could have occurred as the plane circled to make its final approach to the runway, experts said. A circling approach was required because winds were out of the west-northwest. The circling pattern is a more complicated maneuver than just coming in straight.
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