HOWLAND — A three-page National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report into the June 29 plane crash that killed all six people on board after leaving the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport says witnesses on the ground heard a “noticeable pitch change in the engine sound.”

The report states that witnesses were 1 to 2 miles northwest of the crash location and reported hearing a change in the engine sound and said the plane “never appeared above the tree line and that the engine was roaring.” The report states the plane reached an altitude of “only about 100 feet.”

Moments later, “they heard the sound of trees breaking, followed by a loud explosion, and observed smoke rising from the area where the airplane had gone down,” the report states.

Among the parts of the plane that were retained for further examination by investigators were both engines on the 1984 twin-engine Cessna 441 Conquest and both propellers, the report states. The parts were going to be examined at each manufacturer’s facility “with NTSB oversight.”

The “Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System” also was going to be retained for “readout by the manufacturer,” the report states. Parts of the plane called the “throttle quadrant,” “annunciator panel” and “inboard section of the right elevator torque tube” were retained for examination by the NTSB Materials Laboratory, the report added.

The plane departed for a flight to Bozeman, Montana, at 6:52 a.m. with Joe Maxin, 63, of Canfield as pilot and Timothy Blake, 50, of Hubbard, in the co-pilot seat. The other four passengers were Veronica Weller, 68; James (Jim) Weller, 67; John Weller, 36; and Maria Weller, 34, all of Hubbard. All were killed.

James Weller was president and CEO of Liberty Steel Industries Inc. Veronica was his wife and John was their son. Maria was John’s wife and the couple’s daughter-in-law.

The report is written in technical terms not easily researched by people not in the airline industry, but it appears the plane was positioned in a fairly ordinary manner when it was captured on security video from a farm located about a half mile east of the crash site.

The report states that the security video “depicted the airplane emerging from behind trees flying at a low altitude in a westerly direction in a nearly nose-level and wings-level attitude.”

When people in aviation talk about a plane’s “attitude,” they are talking about tools that help a pilot “maintain straight and level flights” and other things, according to the Pilotmall.com website.

The plane “impacted trees in a heavily wooded area which separated a major portion of the left wing,” the report states. A large amount of the plane came to rest upside down. And the cockpit, cabin, right wing and separated section of the left wing were “heavily damaged by the postcrash fire,” the report states.

This newspaper reached out to multiple aviation experts mentioned in news reports of aviation accidents to seek out inside knowledge about aviation terms and techniques mentioned in the report but got no response.

Andrew Resnick, spokesman for the Western Reserve Port Authority, which runs the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, responded to a request for comment on the report by saying, “The report notes the need for additional testing and analysis, which is continuing to be conducted by NTSB to determine the root cause of the accident. We continue to fully cooperate with NTSB and other regulatory agencies as the investigation progresses.”

Maxin was lead flight instructor at the Youngstown Flight School, which was created in early 2024 at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna. He also was a former member of the board of directors of the Western Reserve Port Authority and was serving the port authority as director of compliance, reviewing contracts and assisting with grants and other things.

The NTSB report called Maxin an airline transport pilot, which was confirmed on the FAA Airmen Inquiry website. He received that certificate in 2016, the website states. He earned his flight instructor certificate in March of 2025.

According to the website of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, an “airline transport pilot certificate is required to become an airline pilot or a charter captain.”

According to the FAA website, an airline transport certificate is the highest level of the five levels.

The lowest level is student pilot, followed by recreational pilot, private pilot, commercial pilot, which allows a pilot to conduct some operations for compensation and hire.

“An airline transport pilot certificate is required to fly as captain by some air transport operations,” the FAA website states.

In general, the NTSB tries to complete an investigation within 12 to 24 months, but there are factors that can greatly affect that timing, the NTSB website states.