The father of former college soccer star Karena Groff — who was at the controls of the family’s small plane before it crashed in the Catskills last month, killing all aboard — stopped communicating with air traffic control moments before the aircraft struck the ground, federal investigators said.
The detail was revealed in a preliminary report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board on the April 12 incident, in which Neuroscientist Michael Groff, his urologist wife Joy Saini, and their kids Karena and Jared, and their significant others, died.
Groff’s Mitsubishi MU-2B-40 plane left the Boston area that morning and picked up Karenna, a former MIT soccer player named the 2022 NCAA woman of the year, and her boyfriend Jared Santoro at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York, at around 11:30 a.m. heading north to Columbia County Airport in Hudson, the NTSB said.
Officials search through the site of a deadly plane crash in Copake, New York on April 13, 2025. NTSB
An aerial picture captured the site of the Mitsubishi MU2B airplane crash on April 12, 2025. NTSB
Dr. Michael Groff, Karenna Groff, Dr. Jooy Saini, and James Santoro were identified as the victims of the crash. APMichael Groff alerted air traffic control at 11:57 a.m. he’d missed the initial approach to the runway at Columbia County Airport, and responded shortly after 12 p.m. to new instructions for landing but about a minute later, according to the NTSB.
But about a minute later, when the controller told him the plane was flying too low, there was no answer, the NTSB said.
Eventually the plane was no longer visible on radar and crashed in snow covered terrain roughly 10 miles south of the airport.
The family planned to celebrate Karenna’s 25th birthday as well as the Passover holiday.
Alexia Couyutas Duarte, one of the victims of the crash, poses with her family after her graduation from Swarthmore College. AP
Debris from the plane crash pile up in the field in upstate New York. NTSB
The crash site in relation to Columbia County Airport and the New York-Massachusetts border. Mike Guillen/NY Post DesignInvestigators didn’t give an exact cause of the crash in the preliminary report but explained that all the aircraft’s major components were discovered within a 150-foot field of debris and that there were no serious weather issues in the area at the time.
NTSB officials have suggested that overcast conditions may have impacted the pilot’s visibility. An initial investigation did not find issues with the aircraft.
