Plane down
I saw this video on cnn.com today:
The plane in the video looked sadly familiar… Turns out it was this plane:
This was the plane I did most of my flight training in, including my first solo (after which this picture was taken) and my checkride. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in the crash, although I’m guessing the pilot is suffering from a bruised ego; but I talked to my friend who owns the plane and the airport and she said that insurance will probably total the plane. That’s a shame, it was a fun plane to fly.
Here’s a more detailed video about the crash from an article here:
The piece has some glaring errors, though. First, the reporter says the pilot was taking off to the east on runway 32. Not possible. Runway 32 goes northwest (hence the number 32, which means the runway heading is 320 degrees, which is northwest). In fact, the pilot was using the opposite direction of runway 32 which is runway 14 (140 degrees being the opposite direction of 320). He also says that the situation could have been worse but for “light winds and quick thinking by the pilot”. I’m guessing that a gust of wind and some poor piloting is exactly what caused the accident.