This article first appeared in the July 1997 issue of FATE magazine. It recounts the strange events surrounding the death of football coach Robert "Bo" Rein and his pilot, Louis Benscotter. Since 1980 several other incidents like this have occurred, such as the loss of pro golfer Payne Stewart in 1999. Hypoxia is almost certainly the cause of the pilots' loss of control (and eventual crash), but in the Rein case the question remains, what caused the loss of pressurization in the Cessna Conquest?
After this article was published in FATE, I received an email from the BBC (yes, the BBC) who wanted to know more about my sources and more details of the incident. I tracked down Jack Barker of the Atlanta FAA office (by then retired), and he confirmed that the agency withheld tapes of cockpit transmissions from independent investigator Frank McDermott. He had no idea why, as this was not standard procedure at all. I asked him if he was willing to talk to the BBC for whatever documentary they were preparing, and he agreed.
As far as I know, it never happened. I never heard from the BBC again, and I don't know if the story was ever used.
Wikipedia's article on Rein contains information on the case that surfaced after my article was written.
The article as it appeared on ParaScope can be found here. Modern comments below have been added in red.
Flight to Oblivion
by Paul B. Thompson
Nebula Editor
[Out of date email address removed]
Thursday, January 10, 1980:
A twin-engine private plane taxied onto the runway
of the Shreveport, Louisiana, municipal airport. At the controls was Louis
Benscotter, 47. Benscotter, a veteran pilot with 31 years of experience, was
preparing to fly to Baton Rouge, a 40-minute hop across the state. When he
filed his flight plan with the Federal Aviation Administration, Benscotter
indicated he would have two passengers. But when he left the ground he had only
one: Robert E. "Bo" Rein, head football coach of Louisiana State University.
The plane, a Cessna Conquest, took off at 9:22
p.m. Four minutes after takeoff, Fort Worth, Texas, Air Traffic Control advised
Benscotter of heavy thunderstorms in the Baton Rouge area and suggested he
bypass them. The pilot asked for permission to divert east, toward Jackson,
Mississippi. Fort Worth cleared Benscotter to go east and climb from 23,000 to
25,000 feet. Benscotter acknowledged his new flight plan. That was the last
voice contact anyone would have with Cessna N441NC.
At 9:38, FAA radar showed the Conquest climbing
above its assigned altitude and veering to the northeast. The FAA called the
plane, but received no answer. Fort Worth ATC then contacted a Pan Am flight
near the wandering Cessna and asked the airliner to warn Benscotter to check
his en route radio frequency. The Pan Am pilot heard Benscotter trying to
respond to Fort Worth, but the transmission was weak. The Cessna pilot did not
respond to air-to-air calls from the Pan Am plane, nor did he answer calls from
an Eastern Airlines jet in the vicinity.
By now Rein and Benscotter had climbed to 33,000
feet, the operational ceiling of the Cessna. Their course was almost due east.
The FAA continued trying to reach the wayward plane. Air traffic centers in
Memphis, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., joined in. None of them succeeded.
N441NC flew on, sometimes climbing as high as 40,500 feet. As the plane neared
the North Carolina state line, the Air National Guard at Seymour Johnson Air
Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina, was notified. Two F-4 Phantom fighter
jets were scrambled to intercept the Cessna. The National Guard pilots were
ordered to close on the private plane and try to assess the problem. Why was
Benscotter so far off course? Why did he not answer radio calls? Why was he so
far above normal flying altitude for his model aircraft?
The Phantoms scrambled. Within minutes after
take-off, they would intercept the Cessna somewhere in the sky over Raleigh,
North Carolina.
#
Bo Rein was a comer. At 30 he became the youngest
head football coach at an American college, and everyone agreed his career held
great promise. Born July 20, 1945, Rein attended Ohio University and received a
Bachelor's degree in 1968. A talented athlete, he played minor league baseball
in 1967 for the Cleveland Indians' organization. He played three seasons of
baseball, and he might have gone to the majors had he not suffered an Achilles'
tendon injury. Rein was also a football All-American in college, and was
drafted by the Baltimore Colts of the NFL in 1968. Rein's destiny did lie on
the gridiron, but not in uniform. Injuries convinced him to coach rather than
play.
In the early 1970s Rein honed his coaching skills
as an assistant coach at a number of schools: Ohio State, William and Mary,
Purdue, North Carolina State, and Arkansas. His time at Raleigh's North
Carolina State was particularly productive, as Rein worked under colorful head
coach Lou Holtz. Holtz left N.C. State in 1976 for a brief stint as head coach
of the NFL's New York Jets. The university chose Bo Rein to replace him.
In three seasons at N.C. State, Rein did so well
he attracted the attention of other, larger college football programs. In
November 1979 he left Raleigh to assume the top spot at Louisiana State.
Bo Rein was much admired by his players and
respected by his coaching opponents. His energy was legendary. One fellow coach
described Rein as "aggressive, tireless, persistent." In 1969, for
example, Rein flew from Ohio to Las Vegas to play in a Continental League
football game. As soon as the game was over he flew right back to Ohio. Rein
enjoyed flying and never avoided it -- even a short trip like Shreveport to
Baton Rouge.
#
Two National Guard Phantoms closed on the lonely Cessna. In
the darkness the jet pilots could see no interior lights in the plane. No one
seemed to be at the controls. Repeated close-range radio calls brought no
response. The Guardsmen even tried wagging their wings, hoping to attract
attention. The Conquest flew on with no more reaction than a radio-controlled
model.
The east coast was below them now, and the
Phantoms had to break off the chase because their fuel was running low. The Air
Force took up the pursuit, rousing an F-106 fighter out of Langley Air Force
Base in southern Virginia. By the time the F-106 pilot, Captain Daniel Zoerb,
found the Cessna, it was flying along at 40,600 feet, eastward over the sea.
Zoerb followed, and N441NC began a gradual descent to 25,000 feet. The Air
Force pilot closed in and saw no signs of life aboard, only a red glow in the cabin
that probably came from the Cessna's instrument panel.
At 25,000 feet the Conquest dropped a wing and
fell into a spin. Zoerb watched it spiral down a hundred miles off the coast of
Norfolk. N441NC never recovered from its spin and plunged into the sea. Local
weather was poor, visibility no more than 15 miles, and waves were running two
to three feet high. Water temperature was only 40 degrees. The crash occurred
shortly before 1 a.m. on January 11.
Seventy miles from the scene of the crash, the
Coast Guard cutter Taney was on patrol. Word of the downed plane reached the
cutter, which immediately put its helm over. An area 40 by 75 miles was
assigned to be searched. A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft joined the operation.
At 6:30 a.m., the cutter Cherokee took over the
rescue operation and kept it up all day. Some debris was sighted but not
recovered: a wheel thought to be the Cessna's and some orange trim from the
fuselage. That was all.
The Conquest had been a troublesome plane for
Cessna. The model was grounded twice by the Federal Aviation Administration, in
1977 and 1979, because of failures in the tail structure. After the second
grounding, all existing planes were modified to correct the fault. The FAA
recertified Cessna Conquests as safe to fly in September 1979. The history of
tail structure failures does not seem to have had anything to do with what
happened to Benscotter and Rein.
The twin turboprop wasn't just a
"grasshopper." It was a million-dollar executive transport. On top of
his 31 years of flying experience, Benscotter had passed a two-week training
course on flying the Conquest. Shortly before its final flight, N441NC had made
a round trip to Houston without incident. So what happened?
Suspicion immediately centered on pilot incapacitation.
Wandering off course, flying to extreme altitudes, and the failure to answer
the radio all pointed to Benscotter and Rein being unable to respond to these
problems. Whatever happened must have happened to both men at the same time.
Had Benscotter alone been stricken (say, by a heart attack), Rein should have
been able to call for help.
Carbon monoxide from the engines' exhaust might
have overcome two men in a light plane, but it seems unlikely in this case.
Instead of a single engine in the nose, the Cessna Conquest had two
wing-mounted turboprops. In flight, the slipstream would tend to wash away any
exhaust fumes long before they penetrated the fuselage.
The National Transportation Safety Board zeroed in
on oxygen deprivation as the most probable cause of the strange last flight of
Cessna N441NC. Hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, is a common threat to anyone flying
above 10,000 feet. The Conquest's cabin was pressurized, like a civilian
airliner's. An 11-cubic-foot oxygen tank was provided, and an elaborate safety
system was built into the plane to prevent the pilot or passengers being
deprived of vital oxygen.
For example, if the pressurization system was not
turned on during the pre-flight check, a red warning light would come on [Is this the light Captain Zoerb saw?] when
the plane reached 10,650 feet. Normal, healthy adults would be conscious at
this altitude and couldn't fail to notice the warning. If they did, at 14,500
feet emergency oxygen masks would pop out, just like the masks on commercial
airliners. It takes 20 minutes of low pressure before hypoxia sets in, and
between two men, one of them should have been able to take emergency measures.
As a final safety check, the heating and cooling
systems in the Conquest would not function at any altitude if the cabin
pressurization was left off.
Though hypoxia seems like the best explanation for
what happened to Benscotter and Rein, there are notable objections to the
theory. The first is the fact that the trouble began only minutes after
takeoff, when the Cessna was not yet at high altitude. Failure to actuate the
plane's oxygen system seems improbable for a pilot of Benscotter's experience.
Mechanical failure isn't likely, either. The Cessna passed all its safety
checks in Shreveport before the flight. N441NC was a relatively new plane, not
worn out or rickety. Before its last flight the airframe had only 38 hours
flying time on it.
Why did none of the jet pilots chasing the Cessna see anyone
on board? If Benscotter had passed out at the controls, his body should have
been visible, strapped in his seat. The slowly climbing attitude of the plane
was probably the result of the pilot trimming it to climb as per his
instructions from Fort Worth ATC, early in the flight. Then for some unknown
reason Benscotter left his seat; he must have, else the weight of his inert
feet and legs on the foot pedals would have seriously affected the plane's
course.
Hypoxia can lead to euphoria, but no suggestion
was found that Rein or Benscotter left the plane while in flight. Small
civilian planes don't carry parachutes.
From the start, the FAA took the investigation of
the loss of Cessna N441NC very seriously. In May 1980 a spokesman announced
that some 20 possible causes of the incident were being studied, ranging from
failure of the Conquest's oxygen system to sudden cabin depressurization from a
mid-air collision with a bird. (Neither Captain Zoerb nor the Air National
Guard pilots mentioned seeing any external damage to the Cessna.) The FAA
refused to endorse any specific theory as long as their investigation continued.
Others involved in the mystery were not so
patient. In March 1980, the Nichols Construction Company, owners of the plane
and employer of Louis Benscotter, filed suit against the FAA and their own
insurance company, Insurance Company of America. Nichols had hired a private
investigator, Frank McDermott of McLean, Virginia, to conduct a parallel
inquiry into the incident. McDermott specialized in aircraft accidents and had
many previous investigations to his credit. Nichols decided to sue the FAA
because FAA Washington headquarters refused to allow McDermott to hear or copy
the tape recordings of air traffic controllers' conversations with Louis
Benscotter.
The FAA specifically ordered its regional offices not to give
McDermott access to the tapes, even though they had always allowed private
investigators such access in the past. The ostensible reason for this
stonewalling was that the official inquiry wasn't yet over. Jack Barker, of the
FAA's Atlanta office, told the press he couldn't understand why the tapes were
being withheld from McDermott. After all, the only conversation between
Benscotter and Fort Worth ATC consisted of ordinary takeoff clearances and
requests to change altitude, or so the FAA reported. Nichols wanted to collect
the insurance on the million-dollar aircraft and could not do so until the FAA
investigation was concluded.
No wreckage or remains were ever recovered. The
area of ocean where the Cessna crashed is more than 1,100 feet deep, making
salvage impractical. In April 1980, Judge E. Maurice Braswell declared Rein and
Benscotter legally dead so that their estates could be settled. It was not
until December 10, 1980, that the NTSB issued its official report on the loss
of Cessna N441NC. After almost a year of theorizing and wrangling, a
spokesperson for the Board said, "The Board was unable to determine a
cause because it was unable to find any wreckage. This is the end, unless some
new evidence is offered and the case reopened."
All that remains is the mystery. Something
happened to Rein and Benscotter within minutes of their take-off from
Shreveport. Something rendered both men helpless, yet allowed the Conquest to
fly on its own for more than a thousand miles. Auto pilot could do that, but
that presumes Benscotter was able to activate it. The plane climbed to heights
greater than it was designed for, and it most likely crashed because it ran out
of fuel.
There have been many aviation mysteries over the
years, from the disappearances of the French dirigible Dixmude in 1923 [exploded in midair over the Mediterranean], flying ace Charles Nungesser in 1927, to the crew of Navy blimp L-8, the Star
Tiger, the Star Ariel, and many more.
But all these machines, their pilots and
passengers, vanished over featureless seas, without any witnesses to record
their fates. The last flight of Louis Benscotter and Bo Rein is an entire other
dimension of mystery. It was tracked across well-populated and well-monitored
countryside, chased by military jets, investigated by federal and private
experts -- and yet there are no answers.
Somehow this incident is all the more unsettling
for having happened under such close observation. It shakes our faith in our
omnipresent technology, much as a public tragedy like the Challenger disaster
did. In that case answers were found, but the empty sky and deep Atlantic yield
no answers to the disappearance of Coach Bo Rein, no matter how long we ponder
them.
Text copyright (c) 1997. Revised 2024, with
additional material by the author.
