Both engines stalled at FL410 during last Thursday’s fatal Pinnacle Airlines repositioning flight from Little Rock, Ark., to Minneapolis, according to the NTSB. Both pilots died when their Bombardier CRJ200 regional jet crashed outside Jefferson City, Mo., at 9:21 p.m. local time into a residential neighborhood. No one on the ground was injured. NTSB investigators, still in the process of reading data from the airplane’s cockpit-voice and flight-data recorders, haven’t yet determined what caused the engines to quit. The 50-seat aircraft (S/N 7396, built in 2000) had 10,161 hours total time and its last major inspection revealed no major problems. However, pilots aborted the airplane’s last scheduled flight when, during taxi, an indicator light alerted the crew to a possible problem with the bleed-air system. Shortly afterward Pinnacle flew two mechanics to Little Rock to repair the 14th stage bleed-air route on the right engine, according to a Safety Board spokesman.
