Pilot reported trouble before deadly plane crash on Atlanta highway

By David Beasley ATLANTA (Reuters) - The pilot of a private plane told an air traffic controller he was having trouble gaining altitude shortly before crashing onto a busy Atlanta highway this month, killing all four people on board, according to a federal report released on Tuesday. "I'm having some problem climbing here," pilot Greg Byrd said after departing from the DeKalb Peachtree Airport on May 8, the National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report on the accident stated. The pilot’s last words to the controller were "zero-two-victor; we're going down here at the intersection," the report said. The Piper PA-32 crashed onto Interstate 285, about two miles north of the airport, the report said. The crash shut down a stretch of highway for hours but no drivers on the major thoroughfare reported any injuries, including a tractor-trailer driver who said the aircraft clipped his truck. A witness told investigators he saw the airplane "moving extremely slow and only 75 to 100 feet above ground level when it went over his head," according to the report, which did not explain why the plane was unable to gain altitude. It could be more than a year before the NTSB determines the cause of the crash, agency spokesman Keith Holloway said. The victims included Byrd, two of his sons and the fiancée of one of the sons, who were headed to Oxford, Mississippi to attend the college graduation of a third son. (Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Will Dunham)