It may be a year until officials determine the cause of a Labor Day plane crashed that killed a local attorney, his wife and father-in-law.
Michael and Christy Apfelbaum and Clarence "Mike" Imgrund died in the 12:12 p.m. crash outside Greensboro, North Carolina, while en route from Sarasota, Florida, to the Piedmont Triad International Airport, Greensboro.
Peter Knudson, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said a field investigator finished up the on-scene phase Wednesday, and a preliminary report will be released sometime next week.
The cause of the accident will be determined at the tail end of the investigation, he said, which, on average, takes a year to complete.
"There's a lot of work we need to do," he said. "We look at everything and we need to rule things out."
Michael Apfelbaum had been piloting the Beechcraft A36 single-engine plane at the time of the crash. In a recording of Apfelbaum's final exchange with air traffic control, he asked for help navigating to the airport. The air traffic controller directs Apfelbaum, while advising him to pull up out of apparent cloud cover.
In Apfelbaum's final dispatch to the controller, he asks if there's a nearby field and is cut off as he gives his identification code. Less than a minute later, the controller noted the plane had fallen off the radar.
The plane was discovered on the property of the Vulcan Materials quarry in Forsyth County. It had burst into flames upon hitting the ground.