The private plane that crashed after plunging into a “descending spiral” Thursday night — killing a father and son on their way home from a baseball game — had a glitch in the aircraft’s weather tracking system, a heartbroken relative revealed.
Jimmy Don Lewis, 48, was piloting a Beechcraft Baron 55 with his 22-year-old son, Brayden Ty Lewis, when their plane plummeted during a bad storm and crashed in a rural part of Illinois.
Kelsey Lewis — who had flown with her father and brother just hours earlier — said a glitch in the aircraft’s weather-tracking system could be the reason why her family members decided to fly into the eye of the storm that night, the Daily Mail reported.
The plane’s tracking software was 30 minutes off, which tragically led the father and son to believe they would “hit the gap” between flying into the eye of the storm and landing safely, Kelsey told the outlet.
Shortly after Jimmy and Brayden took off from St. Louis Regional Airport, the plane lost contact at 10:48 p.m. — and investigators believe the plane crashed around 11 p.m.
The small jet was on in the air for 22 minutes before it crashed, Kelsey said.
Jimmy was an experienced flyer and would have never risked flying through a storm, the grieving daughter said.
“My dad, when it came to flying, he was very, very, cautious of everything,” Kelsey told the outlet. “Very cautious.”
Based on preliminary flight data, “the aircraft appeared to begin a turn, possibly in an attempt to avoid the storm, before entering what appeared to be a descending spiral,” the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department said.
The crash is under investigation.
The family had flown to The Prairie State earlier on Thursday so Kelsey and her fiancé could pick up a new car.
Jimmy and Brayden decided to attend a St. Louis Cardinals game before flying home to Arkansas.
Hauntingly, Kelsey said she was unusually concerned about the status of her father’s and brother’s flight as storms rolled into the region.
“That whole night, I don’t know why, but I checked the plane status for when they would take off,” she told the Mail.
When the plane failed to land in Arkansas, family members began contacting “everyone to figure out where they were” and “why the plane lost contact,” Kelsey said.
Flight tracking data indicated the plane was last seen near Waterloo, Ill. and the Lewis family started to contact local authorities.
The family alerted the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department in Waterloo, which then asked Kelsey, her mother, Jill, and Brayden’s long-term girlfriend, Payton, to come to the station.
“Down, down deep in my mom and I’s heart, when they asked us to come to the police station, we figured something wasn’t okay,” Kelsey tragically recalled.
After waiting for several hours with no answers, the sheriff broke the heartbreaking news at 10:30 a.m. that Jimmy and Brayden’s bodies were found earlier that morning.
“There was a discovery at 7:51 this morning. A plane and two deceased bodies,” Kelsey recalled the sheriff saying.
While she is still processing the loss of her father and brother, Kelsey remembers the pair as “givers” who wouldn’t think twice about helping out anyone in need.
“Neither one of them would want to see either one of us hurting,” Kelsey said.
Flying was Jimmy and Brayden’s “thing” and they received their pilot licenses together.
“My dad and brother, they were… oh, they were thick and thin, they were so close, they did everything together,” Kelsey said.
“That was their thing, they liked to fly. We’ve flown to Branson [in Missouri], we’ve flown to Hot Springs [in Arkansas] for dinner, and things like that.”
In their honor, Jill and Kelsey plan to start a Lewis Memorial Sports Scholarship at Kansas High School — where Brayden had attended and was quarterback of the football team, and Jimmy was an active member of the community.
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