OMAHA — National Transportation Safety Board crash investigators could find no evidence of mechanical failure in the burned wreckage of a small plane that crashed in Iowa on July 1, 2021, killing an Omaha business owner and his grandnephew, according to an updated NTSB report.
A factual summary posted on the NTSB website last month indicates the Cirrus SR22 piloted by Dave Paladino, 54, bounced off the ground 75 feet left of the runway during a landing attempt at Lamoni Municipal Airport just before 8 a.m.
The plane rolled left, cartwheeled over a fence and burst into flames. The airport manager and two members of the airport’s governing board — who had gathered that morning to inspect airport fences — saw the crash and rushed to help.
But they weren’t able to rescue Paladino and his young passenger, Bear Nichols, 15.
People are also reading…
“The plane was completely engulfed in flames with billowing black smoke,†Franklin Finks, 74, an airport commissioner, said in a statement to law enforcement. “The fire was (too) hot to allow approach to the plane. The victims apparently perished quickly.â€
Paladino was born in Omaha and graduated from Norfolk Catholic High School. He later earned degrees at MIT and Stanford.
He was the owner of Dino’s Storage, notable in part for the Bible verses on magnetic signs in front of the facilities across the metro area. He also owned numerous rental properties — though the reportedly poor condition of some of the units drew criticism. Former Omaha City Council member Ben Gray called him a “slumlord.â€
In 2015, he won a waiver from the city to exceed height limits and erect a 125-foot flagpole on one of his Omaha properties in order to fly a giant American flag.
Paladino’s family remembered him as a man of strong Christian faith who loved his family, Nebraska football, CrossFit exercise, reading and rescue of bull mastiff dogs.
Nichols was a budding actor, playing memorable roles in junior versions of “Guys and Dolls,†“Beauty and the Beast,†“Alice in Wonderland†and “Peter Pan†at a children’s theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to a GoFundMe page set up last year in his honor.
Paladino had begun flying in 2019 and earned his pilot’s license Dec. 28, 2020, on a retest after initially failing several parts of his practical examination, according to the NTSB summary.
He had accumulated 166 hours of flying time, including 45 in the Cirrus SR22. Known as “the plane with the parachute,†the SR22 has been the top-selling general aviation aircraft since its introduction 20 years ago.
Its flight controls are more complex than planes from earlier generations. Flying magazine in 2012 called it “the most sophisticated single-engine civilian airplane ever built, and by a long shot.â€
Paladino and Nichols had left that morning from Millard Airport for a flight to a lake property in Iowa, Kevin Paladino — Dave’s brother — .
The plane, a 2004 model, landed in Creston, Iowa, then headed to Lamoni, which is near the Missouri border about 115 miles southeast of Omaha.
Tony Crandell, 80, a longtime private pilot and the chairman of Lamoni’s airport commission, saw the approach from the south and said it looked normal “albeit a little fast.â€
He said the plane bounced several times before the pilot gunned the engine.
“At that instant, the wing went vertical, and the plane veered left,†Crandell said in a statement.
On the way to the crash site, he saw a deep groove cut in the dirt by the left wing.
NTSB investigators said that fuel lines were intact and oil levels normal before the impact, and that Paladino had not mentioned any mechanical problems in conversations with air-traffic control.
“There was no evidence of pre-impact mechanical malfunctions observed during examinations of the engine and the airframe,†the report said.
The NTSB hasn’t yet determined a probable cause of the crash.
But under “additional information†the summary includes a brief discussion of “torque†— a tendency of propeller aircraft to roll left due to a slipstream caused by the rotating propeller.
It noted that the pilot must use the flight controls to compensate for the torque.
Crandell, a private pilot since 1978, took note of the effect of torque in his eyewitness statement on the day of the crash.
“I can only speculate the pilot tried to take off with full flaps, and with the Cirrus being a performance plane did not counter the torque,†he wrote.