'I had no idea that it could happen so fast'

Murphy departed Martin State Airport in Baltimore shortly after 6 a.m. on February 26 with his son, Josiah, 24, a student pilot, in the right seat, and his daughter, Cheyenne, 25, a musician, in the back seat. They were headed to Rutland/Southern Vermont Regional Airport, the airport closest to Killington, for a ski trip.

"I don't have any experience in this Vermont weather," Murphy said, standing in front of local media gathered to document his return to the crash site with FAA officials on February 28. "I've flown up here in the summertime but never in this kind of weather."

More than 100 volunteer firefighters, police, forest rangers, and a New York State Police helicopter crew eventually responded to Murphy's 911 call, placed soon after the crash from the shoulder of Mount Equinox, where the aircraft had been destroyed as it hurtled through the thickly forested terrain. Waist-deep snow slowed the arrival of the first firefighters at the crash site, but likely also prevented sparks from igniting the fuel. First responders said they were surprised to find the occupants of the wrecked aircraft bundled up in their ski attire, with relatively minor injuries.

Two days later, after returning to the crash site with an FAA official and others, Murphy described how conditions deteriorated along the route of flight, and he found himself weaving around and over clouds that he was determined to avoid. He does not have an instrument rating, or experience flying in instrument conditions.

Murphy did not use the term "sucker hole," but he described encountering one:

"As we were getting closer to Rutland there was like a big open hole, so we thought maybe now's the time to go down under to get to the airport, because it was reported moderate VFR maybe 10 minutes [prior]," Murphy said.

Murphy said his regrets included not requesting VFR flight following, and he was relying on METARs to understand the weather ahead.

"Once I got down in that hole and I was like, this, it doesn’t look like 1,700 feet and um, I checked the METARs and it said … 800 feet, and I was like, this ain't good. So I was like, we've got to climb, we can't go through this," Murphy said. "As the stress level was building on you, I was really scared, and it was hard to make decisions … I didn't feel I could safely turn around."

Mountains rising to nearly 4,000 feet elevation, with lower ridges and valleys in between, define the terrain of southern Vermont.

The ADS-B track of the accident flight passes east of Albany, New York, then the aircraft turned north over rising terrain and climbed to a maximum recorded altitude of 5,003 feet above a ridge at about 1,700 feet elevation, roughly 12 minutes before the crash.

"It just seemed to be building so fast," Murphy recalled. "The system, this mountain, it just engulfed us… And the plane very quickly gained icing. We seen it on the windshield, we seen it on the wings."

They were in the clouds, by Murphy's account compared to ADS-B data, as the aircraft passed within 3 nautical miles of William H. Morse State Airport in Bennington, Vermont, elevation 826 feet, heading north toward Mount Equinox, 3,840 feet at the summit. The NTSB noted in a preliminary report (published without narrative on March 10) that the weather at the Bennington airport—18 nautical miles from the accident location—was overcast at 1,100 feet with 7 miles visibility about 14 minutes after the accident.

"It just wouldn't maintain altitude," Murphy said. "We're really scared and then we get in a fully developed stall-spin."

With the vertical speed indicator showing a descent of 2,000 feet per minute, Murphy said he focused on the artificial horizon displayed on the Garmin G5 electronic flight instrument and "just did a spin recovery," emerging from the clouds with the thickly wooded slope of Mount Equinox in front of him.

Murphy said it was clear at that point they would not recover, and he tried to lift the nose to an attitude matching the slope of the mountain, slowing to a stall as the aircraft first contacted the trees. The fuselage passed between two large trees that sheared the wings off and continued into smaller trees "that kind of acted like a ramp" to where the fuselage came to rest.

None of the trio suffered life-threatening injuries. Muphy showed the cameras his heavily bandaged broken finger; his son had suffered a laceration requiring staples, and his daughter emerged virtually unscathed, though all three had strained their necks from the "whiplash" on impact.

The Murphy family's good fortune continued. Cellular service was available (Equinox has several communications towers near the summit), and volunteer firefighters approached the mountain from two directions, walking then crawling through snow four feet deep near the summit.

In Albany, a state police helicopter crew was preparing to conduct rescue hoist training with two New York State Department of Environmental Conservation forest rangers when the call came in from Vermont seeking help finding a downed aircraft. State police pilots Maj. Jonathan Sperber and Sgt. John Anderton, and Trooper Kevin Aurigema, the technical flight officer who operated the hoist, lifted off with the two rangers, John Gullen and Michael Thompson, to respond.

The helicopter was not able to locate the crash site quickly, because the wreckage was well concealed from above by trees. It refueled and returned to the scene, by which time the first responders had reached the survivors, and guided the helicopter crew in.

"We were right up against the clouds," Sperber recalled. "If they were higher up the mountain, we wouldn't have been able to access them."

Murphy heaped praise on the pilots, the volunteer firefighters and police officers who came to their aid, and the medical staff at the hospitals where he and his children were evaluated and treated for minor injuries.

"I don't remember reading anywhere in there that they talk about how fast icing can happen. I mean, it was within minutes, the plane was unflyable," Murphy said. "I had no idea that it could happen so fast. I just figured I'd climb through that cloud, I'd get on top of it, and we would go find our safe place to land … didn't happen."

Murphy said that starting with the first firefighter to reach the crash site who reassured the much-chagrined pilot that he had been meaning to hike the mountain for a while, everyone who responded took pains to help him feel better.

"Since it happened, I still haven't slept," Murphy told reporters on February 28. "Every time I close my eyes I see that mountain in front of me, my adrenaline shoots up, my heart rate races, and I'm wide awake … I'm wondering when that's going to stop."

Murphy said he hoped other pilots would learn from his mistakes.

"I'm humiliated, you know? I'm going to go before the world and just tell them the mistakes I made to help somebody else, but I'm thoroughly humiliated," Murphy said. "When you're helpless and people come out, the world just comes around you, it's humbling, it's emotional. I'm thankful and grateful."