Hypoxia and Eventual Plane Crash Led to DEATHS – Golf Pro Payne Stewart et al, USA

Learjet 35 N47BA Prior to crash | Source

This true story involves the deaths of six people who perished aboard a plane – two crew members and four passengers, including two-time U.S. Open golf champ Payne Stewart. Plane crashes are nothing new but the way these people died – lack of oxygen which eventually led to the crash of an ‘unmanned’ plane running out of fuel, and with Stewart being at probably the most satisfying time of his career, made this story all the more intriguing and touching…

It was on that last Monday of October when Stewart boarded the private plane — Registration No. N47BA — at Orlando International Airport along with his agents Robert Fraley, 46, and Van Ardan, 45, golf course designer Bruce Borland, 40, pilot Michael Kling, 42, and co-pilot Stephanie Bellegarrigue, 27, for a two-hour flight to Love Field in Dallas.

But 14 minutes after takeoff, approximately 37,000 feet above northwestern Florida, Jacksonville Air Traffic Control lost contact with N47BA, setting off a chain of events that included three separate military responses by F-16 fighter jets. The National Transportation Safety Board released a 31-page report on the crash Nov. 28, 2000 and investigators concluded that the probable cause was “incapacitation of the flight crewmembers as a result of their failure to receive supplemental oxygen following a loss of cabin pressurization, for undetermined reasons.”

Payne Stewart Jumps Payne Stewart at the 1989 Open
Championship at Royal Troon by Lawrence Levy
Source

William Payne Stewart (January 30, 1957 – October 25, 1999) was an American professional golfer who won eleven PGA Tour events, including three major championships in his career, the last of which occurred only months before he died in an airplane accident at the age of 42.

Stewart was born in Springfield, Missouri, and attended Greenwood Laboratory School, a K-12 school, on the campus of Missouri State University. He graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta. He was always popular with fans, especially for his distinctive clothing, and was reputed to have the biggest wardrobe of all professional golfers.

He was a favorite of photographers because of his flamboyant attire of ivy caps and patterned pants, which were a cross between plus fours (trousers that extend 4 inches (10 cm) below the knee (and thus four inches longer than traditional knickerbockers, hence the name)) and knickerbockers, a throwback to the once-commonplace golf “uniform.” Stewart was also admired for having one of the most gracefully fluid and stylish golf swings of the modern era.