NASCAR Hall of Fame nominee Greg Biffle was among seven people – including his wife and two children – killed in a plane crash in Statesville, N.C., on Thursday morning.
Biffle, his wife, Cristina, a real-estate entrepreneur and other, Biffle’s oldest daughter, Emma, 14, and son Ryder, 5, were all on board the Cessna C550 business jet owned by Biffle that crashed at the end of a runway while landing at approximately 10:15 a.m., according to the FAA.
The identities of the other three victims is not known at this writing.
The family was reportedly en route to Sarasota, Fla., when the plane took off at 10:06 a.m. from Statesville Regional Airport, a small airport 45 miles north of Charlotte used by higher-ups at several Fortune 500 companies and top names in the world of NASCAR.
According to online and broadcast reports, the plane never got above 1,000 feet in rough weather conditions – including heavy rain and low fog – before the pilot decided to turn back.
Tim Kenny, an aviation journalist and licensed commercial pilot, told WBTV in Charlotte that the flight data doesn’t appear to indicate anything catastrophic.
“I do see the airplane turning back then to the field and looking like, again, it’s making a reasonable attempt at an approach into the field. And then something goes terribly wrong in the proximity of the runway itself,” Kenny told the TV station.
Witnesses at a nearby golf club said the plane was “way too low” on its approach, so low that golfers on the ninth hole, which is located near the airport’s lone runway, dropped to the ground as the plane was overhead.
“We were like, Oh my gosh! That’s way too low. It was scary,” Joshua Green, of Mooresville, N.C., told the Associated Press.
Biffle, a native of Vancouver, Washington, made his NASCAR Cup Series debut in 2002, after winning the Truck Series championship in 2000 and the Busch Series Rookie of the Year award in 2001.
He would go on to win the Busch Series championship in 2002 before transitioning to the Cup Series full time in 2003.
His best year in the Cup Series was 2005, when he won six races and finished second in the final year-end standings – one of his six Top 10 finishes in his 14-year full-time Cup Series career.
He won 19 Cup Series races, and got one last win in 2019 in a one-off race in the Truck Series, taking the win at Texas Motor Speedway.
Off the track, Biffle was in the news last year when he used his personal helicopter to deliver supplies and internet service to those in need in western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
On one of the trips, Biffle located a family stranded at the bottom of a deep canyon while flying and rescued them.
“Six attempts to land due to difficulty, but we got there,” Biffle wrote on his socials of that experience. “Got him a chainsaw, EpiPens, insulin, chicken food, formula, gas, 2-stroke oil, and sandwiches premade from Harris Teeter before we left.”
Reflecting on the rescue efforts, Biffle equated the feeling to that of winning a race.
“I’ll tell you, the feeling you get when you win a race, you can only ask drivers, right?” Biffle said. “Because the feeling you get when you win that race, that’s the feeling you get when you’re able to help people in need.”
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Chris Graham
