OSU to use 32-seat charter plane
By Owen Canfield
Published: January 21, 2002
STILLWATER, Okla. - Oklahoma State plans to use a 32-seat charter airplane for the remainder of the basketball season, university officials said Monday in discussing the upcoming anniversary of a plane crash that killed 10 men.
The Cowboys already have used the plane twice, for trips to Iowa State and Texas Tech. It is owned by Great Plains Airlines in Tulsa.
Harry Birdwell, university vice president, said the school's regents will be asked Friday to approve a bid from Great Plains for the rest of the season. He said it will cost about $100,000.
Birdwell and athletic director Terry Don Phillips spoke with media as the anniversary approaches of the Jan. 27, 2001, crash in Colorado that killed two players and eight other men associated with the program.
They were killed when their 11-seat Beechcraft King Air 200 went down in a field about 40 miles east of Denver. It was one of three planes, paid for privately by backers of the program, that had been used to transport the team and support staff to Boulder, Colo., for a game.
This season, the Cowboys have taken a commercial jet on one road trip and three times have flown charter-certified smaller planes. The school plans to use the 32-seat charter whenever it's available and otherwise will use the smaller planes.
A university task force is working to develop a comprehensive travel policy for all sports. Birdwell said it is hoped the task force's work will be finished by the end of March or early April.
"We hope it becomes a model that will be favorably viewed by the rest of the Big 12 Conference institutions, if they have any concerns about safety issues and travel issues involving athletic teams," Birdwell said. "We ultimately hope that it will be reviewed by the NCAA and that it may serve as a model for the country, because we have spent a considerable amount of time evaluating best practices from throughout the country."
The task force includes athletes, representatives of the athletic department, OSU administrators, the fathers of three victims, Jared Weiberg, Nate Fleming and Will Hancock, and aviation experts from outside the university.
"When we have aircraft, whether they're charter aircraft or charter companies, we want someone outside of the university to evaluate that particular company or that particular aircraft," Phillips said. "Certainly, that is a way to really try to get the best information you can on how worthy a company may be, how worthy a particular aircraft may be."
