Say Anything Blog

After posting on a Fargo Forum article yesterday which indicated that, instead of Republican House candidate Duane Sand having crashed his plane because of an iced-up carburetor he ran out of gas, I got quite a bit of email.

First, Sand’s campaign manager Matt Dabrowski sends the following:

Duane’s not a mechanic. He honestly wouldn’t know why his plane broke down. WDAY asked him to speculate, and he did.

The actual quote on WDAY was something like, “I think it might have been ice...”

Far from an assertive statement of mechanical know-how, don’t you think?

That’s certainly true, and I wouldn’t put such a deception it above the Fargo Forum which a) is not known for objective journalism and b) has a bone to pick with Sand already.

Here is a copy of the publicly-available NTSB report on the crash.  In the narrative of that report (it’s very short, one page, so I recommend reading the whole thing if you’re interested in this issue) it has Sand as claiming that he checked the fuel level before he took off by looking at the gauges on his plane but not visually checking the fuel in the check.  He also claims that he recently had the gauges calibrated.

Depending on when Sand was interviewed for this report by the NTSB (and I’ve got to think it was soon after the crash) and how that correlates to when he gave the interview with WDAY, the “iced up carburetor” story is looking pretty anemic even if Sand said that’s just what he “thought” it was.  Clearly, the NTSB knew right away what caused the crash (the plane was out of fuel) and questioned Sand along those lines, so Sand himself had to have known that it was an “out of fuel” issue and not a carburetor issue.

Of course, if Sand gave his WDAY interview before learning from the NTSB about the low fuel levels all can be excused.  But if its the other way around, Sand flat-out fibbed.

Also, a reader with some flight experience emails and says that Sand’s pilot’s license may be suspended over this.