UPDATED FOLLOWING NTSB NEWS CONFERENCE and correcting the name of the board member on site.

The plane that crashed in North Carolina on Thursday, killing retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffle and six others hit the ground before arriving at runway of Statesville Airport, where it was heading due to some yet unknown problem on board, National Transportation Safety Board member, Michael Graham told reporters at a briefing today.

People magazine, quoting Cathy Grossu, the mother of Biffle’s wife Cristina, said she received a text from Cristine saying “We’re in trouble,” before the crash. Graham said the NTSB was not aware of that, nor did investigators know what prompted the plane to return to the airport less than 10 minutes after takeoff.

The Cessna 550 private jet exploded, killing all 7 onboard. Biffle, Cristina his two children, Emma and Ryder. Dennis Dutton, a licensed air transport pilot, his son, Jack and Craig Wadsworth, a professional motor home driver associated with NASCAR racing also died.

A key question for crash investigators, as well as the victims’ families and the insurance company providing coverage for the plane, remains unanswered. “Who was flying this airplane?”

Dennis Dutton with his daughter in a photo from Instagram

Presumably, it was Dennis Dutton, a retired airline pilot for Delta Air Lines with experience on a long list of aircraft and the only one on the aircraft with an FAA certification to fly it. Dutton’s Cessna 550 certification was obtained in May of this year. It contained the restriction that he must fly with a second-in-command.

In the briefing, the NTSB’s Graham suggested that the requirement might not have been necessary. “It depends,” he said. “You can have a waiver to operate as a single pilot, and many people do, and it can also be flown with a crew.”

Others tell me that is unlikely in this case, given how recently Dutton became qualified on the jet.

“The plane is capable of being a single-pilot aircraft but it needs special training, a check ride to remove this restriction of having a second in command with you,” said Dan Rose, an aviation lawyer with Kreindler & Kreindler (for whom I worked 20 years ago). “It requires special training and a check ride. If this pilot did not do that, it requires a second-in-command to be with him.”

“Going from an airliner he flew at Delta to a Cessna Citation from the 1980s that’s two completely different animals,” my friend, retired airline pilot John Wade told me of Dutton’s transition to the smaller jet. Wade recalled his transition from flying an Airbus to a HondaJet after retiring. “It’s not simpler, just different.”

Neither Biffle nor Dutton appear to have much time or experience on the Cessna, a 1981 airplane that Biffle acquired in March of this year. His FAA record does not show that the retired racer was qualified to fly as second-in-command on the Cessna. Whether he could serve without the notation on his record is not known.  The only other pilot on the plane was Dennis Dutton’s son, Jack, who obtained a private pilot’s licence last month. The NTSB investigation includes a group dedicated to reviewing crew performance and certification.

N257BW in a sales photo from earlier this year

The qualifications of both members of the crew will be important to the insurers of the airplane, who could deny coverage to victims and claimants if FAA regulations are determined not to have been followed.

The group was headed to Florida, according to Garrett Mitchell, a digital creator and producer of auto sports-related content. “Unfortunately,” he posted on Facebook yesterday, the family “were on their way to spend the afternoon with us.”

Airplane crashes involving race car drivers go back decades. As I reported for The New York Times and my blog, NASCAR team owner Jack Roush and a companion were injured when a plane he was piloting split apart while attempting to land at in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 2010.  In 2017, NASCAR racing legend Ted Christopher, 59, was killed along with pilot Charles Dundas while flying through Connecticut en route to a race in Long Island, New York.

Wade reminded me this morning of several others, Davey Allison killed in a helicopter he was piloting in 1993 and NASCAR Hall of Famer Curtis Turner who died in the crash of the plane he was piloting in 1970.

The most deadly car racing-related crash is probably the plane owned by Hendrick Motorsports that killed ten people. The group was on its way to Martinsville Speedway in Virginia. Both the son and brother of team owner Rick Hendrick were among the dead.

But perhaps the most poignant disaster is the one that killed not just those aboard the plane but residents of the home it crashed into in 2007. Janice Woodward and her two children died along with both men in the airplane, pilot Michael Klemm and Bruce Kennedy, the husband of International Speedway Corp. President Lesa France.

Within the world of auto racing, many participants sport pilots’ licenses. And while speed, competition and adrenaline may be valued qualities in that arena, the discipline of athletes must prevail when it comes to flying.