ALEXANDRIA, Minn. — Federal investigators have identified pilot spatial disorientation as the likely cause of the August 2021 plane crash that killed three people west of the Twin Cities.

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final report on the plane that took off from Alexandria and crashed near Victoria on Aug. 7, 2021. Dr. James Edney of Omaha, Neb., died in the crash, along with his 42-year-old stepson, Jacob Mertes, and Mertes’ 37-year-old wife, Dr. Sara Mertes. Edney, who owned a cottage on Lake Miltona near Alexandria, was piloting the plane.

According to the report, the plane made several directional changes as it approached descent before entering a left-turning spiral. The plane crashed into the ground roughly eight miles west of its destination, Eden Prairie’s Flying Cloud Airport, and breaking up just before impact, the report states. No one on the ground was injured.

“The airplane debris on the ground … showed that an in-flight breakup occurred during the final seconds of flight,” the report

While the pilot was flying the final approach, several of his radio transmissions were either delayed or disjointed, indicating that he “was task-saturated,” the report reads.

“The performance study showed that, when the airplane made the series of turns while on final approach, erratic altitude and airspeed fluctuations occurred,” the report reads. “These airspeed and altitude fluctuations and the tight spiraling turn that began afterward were consistent with the pilot becoming spatially disoriented due to the lack of visual references while the airplane was operating in IMC. The pilot’s spatial disorientation led to his loss of airplane control.”

The report states that a friend of Edney said he had adopted an instrument flying habit in the Mooney M20M airplane that involved making turns on approach primarily with the rudder and adjusting pitch attitude with the pitch trim.

“If the pilot controlled the airplane in such a manner during the accident flight, especially in response to the controller’s low-altitude alert, the application of rudder could have exacerbated the pilot’s erratic airplane control inputs while on approach,” the report reads.

James Edney, 72, was well-known among the Alexandria pilot community, and friends described him as an experienced pilot. Edney was an Omaha surgeon who was recognized as a top breast cancer specialist in the Omaha region, according to his obituary.

A few days before the crash, Edney and his wife, Deborah, hosted a large family gathering, including Jim Edney’s siblings, at Lake Miltona, where Edney had spent time since he was a child.

Related Articles

Letters: Among metro transit-rail systems, ours is an outlier — to ill effect

Gov. Walz orders flags to fly at half-staff in honor of Minnesotan who died in Osprey crash in Japan

LGBTQ+ activists in Minnesota want prosecutors to treat the killing of a trans woman as a hate crime

Home for the holidays: MN National Guard’s 133rd Airlift Wing returns from deployment

Deaths from tainted cantaloupe increase to 3 in U.S. and 5 in Canada