Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have discovered that the Beech King Air 200 carrying eight members of the Oklahoma State basketball team was not properly de-iced prior to takeoff from a Denver area airport. "It was not de-iced," said a spokesperson with the National Transportation Safety Board. "It had been in a warm hangar. The information we received was that it proceeded from the hangar, taxied out to the runway and expeditiously began its takeoff."

Wreckage from the twin-engine plane was scattered over a mile wide area some 40 miles east of Denver. Investigators told reporters that the weather at the time of the crash included differing types of precipitation and some turbulence. Other pilots who flew in the vicinity during the same period sent mixed reports of ice. Two flights that departed the airport prior to the doomed King Air reported no icing problems, while the pilot of a plane that left the airport about an hour after the crash told air traffic controllers that ice was a factor. The pilot of the plane that crashed was very experienced with over 6,000 flight hours.