BORDEN, Ind. (WHAS11) — Questions remain after a corporate jet crashed in Southern Indiana, killing all three people on board.
The victims have been identified, but the cause is still unknown. In the days following the crash, National Transportation Safety Board officials have been at the crash site investigating. Helping them gather evidence, are crew members from AMF Aviation, an aircraft recovery team.
The AMF team has used ATV's, saws, cranes and any other equipment and tools they can to scour the woods for pieces of the jet.
"It's an extensive, very scattered debris field. The plane was fragmented immensely," said Chris Ferraraccio, co-owner of AMF Aviation.
According to Ferraraccio, the debris field is about 300-400 yards long and 30-40 yards wide. His team has recovered only a few large pieces, including the jet's two engines. The rest of the plane, he said, is made up of pieces the size of the palm of someone's hand. Enough to fill 15-18 large-sized bags of debris.
"Quite often they're more contained than this. But being a jet, this came in with a lot more velocity so it had a lot more energy and it fragmented considerably more than most of them," Ferraraccio said.
Despite the widespread wreckage, he said the terrain at the crash site is mostly flat, and easy to manage in comparison to other crash sites he's worked at.
Ferraraccio's company is one of only a few throughout the country that help clear crash wreckage and gather evidence for NTSB and FAA officials. AMF Aviation covers most of the middle of the country and clears between 55 and 70 accident sites each year. This allows them to identify parts of the plane and document where they are in the debris field.
"Then at some point, they'll authorize it for transport and then we'll dis-assemble, or in this case, pick-up and then transport it to our facility in Springfield, Tennessee outside of Nashville," Ferraraccio said.
"More than likely they'll come down with their subject matter experts, usually an engine guy and an airframe guy and then they'll go further into the forensics of it."
It's a task many don't think of, but one that is important in determining what caused a plane or jet to crash.
"People want closure. They want to know what happened and why it happened. So you gotta get dirty, and get in there," Ferraraccio said.
In addition to running AMF Aviation for the past 13 years, Ferraraccio is also a pilot and an aircraft mechanic.
"Some days I fly, some days I fix them, some days I pick them up," he said.
Even with years of extensive aircraft experience, he said he can't easily suggest what may have caused the jet to crash.
"Many times when we show up at a scene you can look at it and say 'probably this led to that, probably something here.' I'm scratching my head as much as anybody on this one right now. There's no smoking gun or smoke trail to follow right now. There's just no evidence that's blatantly obvious. It's gonna be a difficult one to figure out," he said.
AMF Aviation expects to finish clearing out the wreckage by Monday afternoon. But they say it could take NTSB up to a year to fully determine what caused the deadly crash.
►Contact reporter Tyler Emery at temery@WHAS11.com. Follow her on Twitter (@TylerWHAS11) and Facebook.