Investigators to make public documents in Wellstone investigation

Friday, February 21st 2003, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The National Weather Service had advised pilots that icing was possible when Sen. Paul Wellstone chartered a plane to a funeral in northeastern Minnesota during his re-election campaign last year.

The King Air A100 crashed about 2 1/2 miles from the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport, killing everyone aboard: Wellstone, D-Minn., his wife, Sheila; their 33-year-old daughter, Marcia Wellstone Markusan; and five others.

Investigators think it was ice on the wings that caused the plane to go down on Oct. 25, according to a December progress report by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Ice on a plane's wing disrupts the air flow, causing the wing to lose its lift and the plane to suddenly change course.

On Friday, the NTSB was releasing about 200 pages of reports on the plane crash, but they were not going to draw final conclusions about the cause of the accident.

Safety board investigators also were looking at other possible causes, such as inaccurate navigational aids and human error, fatigue or disorientation.

NTSB staff will draft a report that analyzes the accident and proposes conclusions about what caused it.

The board may hold a public meeting to discuss the staff report, NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm said. The board will vote on the staff's findings about the crash, and may make safety recommendations that could be adopted by the Federal Aviation Administration.