Topeka ? The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed, low altitude during takeoff and trees all contributed to a private plane crash that killed a commander in the Kansas Air National Guard.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Col. Mike O’Toole’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed resulted in a stall at takeoff that likely caused the crash.

The findings were in the NTSB’s final crash report, which was released Thursday.

“It’s worded that way because it’s not necessarily saying that the pilot caused the stall,” said NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway. “It was his failure to maintain the airspeed, which is possible during a stall.”

O’Toole’s 1964 Cessna 182G plane crashed on Aug. 8, 2003, as he took off from Buena Terra Airport, a private airport in northwest Shawnee County. He, his wife and one daughter were flying to Atkinson Municipal Airport, near Pittsburg.

O’Toole, 51, commander of the Guard’s 190th Air Refueling Wing, died at the scene. His wife, Pamela, and daughter, Shannon, survived.

One of the passengers heard the stall warning before the plane crashed in a field, according to the report. The passenger said the airplane seemed low and the engine “did not sound right.”

“She reported that she recalled the plane going down and the airplane was not responding the way the pilot wanted,” the report said.

Retired Col. Don O’Toole, Mike O’Toole’s father and former state aviation officer, said an airplane stalls when the angle of the wings is too high for the airspeed.

“I know Mike was a good pilot, and I have flown with him a number of times in that airplane,” he said Friday. “From that field where he took off, he had plenty of room and he wasn’t overloaded.”

Aviation experts living near the airstrip told Don O’Toole that when his son took off, the engine sounded like that of a Cessna 170, a smaller engine.

“My own feeling — and I wasn’t there — was knowing Mike and knowing the situation, that something developed at a point where no response was possible,” Don O’Toole said. “It was either fly into the power line or try to get over the power line. I suppose most anybody would try to get over the power line.”

The report doesn’t say why the plane stalled or why O’Toole failed to maintain adequate airspeed.

“If it doesn’t say (why) in the report,” Holloway said, “it’s more than likely because we weren’t able to determine that. Anything beyond that would be speculation.”