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Article IndexBY ADELE SAMMARCO
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
A single-engine plane that left Teterboro Airport just before 10 a.m. Tuesday crashed onto I-287 in Morris County, N.J.
According to a spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, five passengers, who were on their way to Atlanta for the holidays, all perished in the crash in the town of Harding.
45-year-old investment banker Jeffrey Buckalew was said to be piloting the plane. His friend and colleague, 36-year-old Rakesh Chawla, was also on-board along with Buckalew's wife, Corinne, and their two young children, Jackson and Meriwether. The family’s dog also perished in the crash.
A National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson said,
“14 minutes into the flight, there was some discussion between the pilot and controller about locations of icing conditions,” adding he was uncertain whether they were having issues with ice in clouds or on the aircraft itself.
Moments later, the aircraft vanished from radar and witnesses reported hearing a loud sound like an engine revving, followed by a long whistle before the boom of the crash.
Chris Covello of Rockaway Township saw the aircraft spiraling-out of control before it violently came crashing to the ground, “It was like the plane was doing tricks or something, twirling and flipping. I thought any second they were going to pull up. But then the wing came off and they went straight down.”
Jim Peters, a spokesman for the F.A.A., said it had been bound for DeKalb-Peachtree Airport near Atlanta when an air-traffic control center, in Ronkonkoma, Long Island, lost radio communication and radar contact with the Socata TBM-700 aircraft after the pilot requested to go to a higher altitude about 30 miles southeast of Teterboro.
The aircraft crashed in Harding Township, near Milepost 35. The crash temporarily caused traffic to be diverted from Interstate-287 in both directions, though some lanes re-opened around 10:40 a.m.
Buckalew, who owned the plane and had been a pilot for more than a decade, was head of Greenhill & Company's North American Advisory activities, while Chawla was a managing director.
In a statement issued by the company Tuesday, “The firm is in deep mourning over the tragic and untimely death of two of its esteemed colleagues and members of Jeff’s family. Jeff was one of the first employees of Greenhill. He and Rakesh were extraordinary professionals who were highly respected by colleagues and clients alike. They will be sorely missed, and our sympathies go out to their families and friends.”
Buckalew joined Greenhill in 1996 after spending three years at Salomon Brothers and two years with Chemical Bank’s leveraged finance group. Chawla joined the firm from the Blackstone Group in 2003, as reported in the New York Times.
