The bodies of four people, three from the same family, were found Thursday in the wreckage of a single-engine plane that crashed the night before, 60 miles east of Des Moines in icy, overcast weather.
The crash killed the plane’s owner and pilot, Dan Lawson, 55, of Chandler, Ariz.; his brother Larry Lawson, 54, of Altoona, Iowa; Larry Lawson’s daughter Lisa, 25; and her boyfriend, Jose Garcia, according to Tracy Lawson, Larry Lawson’s daughter and Lisa’s sister.
At 4:36 p.m. Wednesday, Dan Lawson’s red-and-white Piper PA-32 departed Palwaukee Regional Airport in Wheeling for Ankeny Regional Airport, a suburban airfield north of Des Moines, said FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory.
But the plane never completed the 2 1/2-hour flight, officials said.
Tracy Lawson said she and her family had been expecting the foursome to arrive Wednesday about 7 p.m. As hours passed with no word, “we knew something was terribly wrong,” she said.
The Aviation Weather Center, based in Kansas City, Mo., confirmed Thursday that it had issued a general aviation warning for the Des Moines area at 6:15 p.m. and again at 6:35 p.m. Wednesday. Icing was observed, visibility was 2 to 2 1/2 miles and the cloud ceiling had dropped to 500 feet from 700 feet in 20 minutes, said spokesman Pat Slattery.
“Only instrument-rated pilots should be flying under those conditions,” Slattery said. Officials said they did not know if Lawson was instrument-rated.
Officials with Exec 1 Aviation, a fixed-base operator at Ankeny, said Dan Lawson flew into Ankeny on Dec. 10. He told officials there that he flew in to visit with family in the Des Moines area. Lawson parked his plane with Exec 1 during his stay, they said. It was at least the third time he had made the trip from Chandler, they said.
The Lawson brothers departed Ankeny for Palwaukee between 9 and 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to pick up Lisa Lawson and Garcia, who had flown into Chicago from Spain, an Exec 1 Aviation official said.
Dan Lawson checked weather reports before departing Ankeny but was not required to file a flight plan because he was using visual flight rules, Exec 1 officials said.
Rob Mark, a Palwaukee spokesman, said officials there do not know if Lawson checked the weather reports before departing.
Lawson’s wife contacted Exec 1 officials about 8 p.m. Wednesday, saying she had not heard from her husband, officials there said. She contacted the FAA five hours later, Cory said.
A statewide bulletin was issued at 3:45 a.m. Thursday, officials said. Ground and air search crews with the Iowa Wing of the Civil Air Patrol started searching for the aircraft at first light Thursday, said spokesman Maj. Doug Jansen.
Jansen said the plane’s emergency beacon was not working.
At 9:29 a.m. Thursday, a resident of the small farming community of Brooklyn, about 55 miles east of Ankeny, alerted authorities to the wreckage in a snow-covered cornfield.
