Mystery surrounds pilot's death in west Michigan airplane crash

Local and federal medical officials came to conflicting conclusions on what caused the death of a west Michigan pilot whose plane crashed near Ottawa Executive Airport in 2020.

Dale DeWeese, 61, and his wife, Joyce, 59, died on Sept. 19, 2020, as the Van's RV-9 kit aircraft he was piloting crashed in a Zeeland Township field shortly after takeoff.

But did the pilot die from injuries sustained in the accident or did a coronary artery disease event cause an incapacitation and crash?

Ottawa County and U.S. Department of Defense medical officials disagree, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report on the probable cause that was dated June 21.

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What's known is that Dale DeWeese took off from Ottawa Executive Airport at 6:33 a.m., about an hour before sunrise, for what the NTSB said was his first night flight in the aircraft. He also had not had a night landing in about five years, the report said.

He climbed for 2 minutes before returning to the airport, where he transmitted on the radio that he was on final approach. Instead of landing, the pilot performed a go-round and climbed to enter the traffic pattern for the opposing runway.

"It was going side to side," said William Wheeler, who noticed the airplane flying strangely while he was stopped at a nearby rest area along Interstate 196 between Grand Rapids and Holland. "The plane came back up and then went to (the) left side and went into a nosedive and immediately burst into flames."

An earlier avionics problem

Dale DeWeese was a career electrical engineer at Steelcase, and known for his meticulous nature, according to his obituary. He and Joyce, who were from Zeeland, were active members of the Jamestown Baptist Church, where they served in the missions and children's ministries.

Just 12 days before the accident, DeWeese was on a daytime flight back from the northern Michigan when his attitude heading reference system failed and he smelled something like burning insulation.

"It smelled expensive," he texted a friend the next day.

He shut down the electronics and landed safely using his analog instruments.

DeWeese discovered that a circuit card running the avionics had three elements that had failed. Instead of getting a new circuit card, he made the repairs himself, and described them to a friend.

"What a pain to install those little diodes," he wrote. "I epoxied the questionable electrical lands to hopefully prevent stresses" and bench-tested the avionics thoroughly.

He flew the airplane the day before the accident without any issues.

During its investigation of the wreckage, the NTSB found no mechanical problems with the engine or flight controls, although the avionics burned up in the fire.

The investigation did find that his most recent flight medical evaluation was in 2015, during which he reported no medical problems or medications. He had completed a BasicMed check in 2017, but it was out of date.

The autopsy revealed medical problems, however, that led to a contested cause of death.

Autopsy results challenged

The autopsy by the Holland Hospital Laboratory Services Pathology Department discovered near complete blockage of Dale DeWeese's left anterior descending coronary artery, 50% narrowing of the left circumflex coronary artery and an old area of heart muscle scarring from reduced blood supply.

It determined that DeWeese died of natural causes from coronary artery disease — not from his injuries in the crash.

An examiner with the U.S. Armed Forces Medical Examiner System came to a different conclusion.

It found that "the pilot’s cause of death was multiple injuries due to an aircraft mishap and that his manner of death was accident" after reviewing the autopsy report for the NTSB.

The NTSB acknowledged in its final report that DeWeese could have become incapacitated during the flight, but ultimately rejected that likelihood.

"It is possible that the pilot was experiencing symptoms of a heart-related medical event and that may have been the reason for his attempt to return to the airport," the NTSB wrote. "Furthermore, symptoms of such an event might have impaired his performance while maneuvering. However, there is no specific evidence that a such an event occurred and a systems failure involving the (avionics) repair provides a reasonable alternate explanation for the pilot’s attempted return."

The probable cause of the crash, the NTSB found, was his failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in too little airflow over the wings to keep the plane aloft, known as an aerodynamic stall. His lack of experience flying at night probably was a contributing factor, it claimed.