Cause of plane crash that killed Nancy Parker ‘undetermined,’ NTSB says in final report

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - The final report from the National Transportation Safety Board provides few answers as to how a plane carrying FOX 8′s Nancy Parker and the pilot whose story she was covering crashed, killing them both.

The conclusion drawn from the report is that the pilot, Franklin J.P. Augustus, lost control for “undetermined reasons.”

+ Remembering Nancy Parker: Devoted journalist, loving wife and mother

The plane crashed shortly after taking off from New Orleans’ Lakefront Airport on Aug. 16.

Witnesses reported the airplane as “unstable,” and “wiggling,” with a sputtering engine before crashing and bursting into flames less than a mile south of the airport, the report says.

Control tower personnel say Augustus requested to return to the airport shortly after takeoff but did not specify why.

The post-crash fire consumed most of the airplane, the cockpit, and flight control surfaces, turning components into molten material and rendering them unexaminable.

Pieces of the craft such as the propellor, spark plugs, fuel injectors, cylinders, and pistons that were able to be removed showed no anomalies, the NTSB says.

Nancy Parker was a storyteller, friend, wife, and mother, who put her heart and soul into everything she did.

She was a five-time Emmy Award winning journalist and eight-time Emmy nominee who has spent almost thirty years covering news in South Louisiana.

Copyright 2022 WVUE. All rights reserved.