This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

BOISE, Idaho • The National Transportation Safety Board has released its preliminary report on the plane crash that killed Micron CEO Steve Appleton.

Appleton's experimental Lancair aircraft crashed shortly after his second takeoff at the Boise airport on Feb. 3.

The report, released Thursday, says several witnesses saw Appleton take off, climb to 5 to 10 feet above the ground and touch back down. Appleton told air traffic controllers there was some sort of problem and that he was going to go back to the hangar to figure it out.

Seven minutes later Appleton took off again. The plane began to climb to about 100 to 200 feet then made a steep bank to the left. The airplane rolled once and hit the ground nose first in a dirt area between two runways.