Saturday morning the wreckage from Friday night's crash still lays near the runway at the Elizabethton Municipal Airport.
Photo by Laura Halm
ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. -- Scarey moments Friday night for those taking part in a Fly-In at the Elizabethton Municipal Airport. One of the planes plunged to the ground moments after take off. Officials tell News 5, the plane was about 100 feet in the air when something went wrong and it crashed.
The buzzing of airplanes taking off or landing is normal at any airport. But there were two questions runnign through Jay Pratt's mind the second he heard a loud crash Friday night. "Who is it? Was it one of my friends?," he said. Turns out, it was. "Then I found out of course he was OK and his passenger was fine. They just had bumps and bruises. Even though the plane looks like a big crumpled mess," said Pratt.
Inside that crumpled mess were Dennis Wittenberg and Greg Campbell, according to Dan Cogan with the Elizabethton Municipal Airport. Cogan tells News 5, Campbell and Wittenberg are both pilots taking part in the Super Cub Fly-In that's taking place at the Elizabethton Municipal Airport this weekend. "This is our fourth year int he Super Cub Fly-In and we've never had any incident before," said Cogan.
News 5 WCYB'S Laura Halm did some digging and found the plane is a 1960 single engine piper cub registered out of Oklahoma and Campbell is a part owner. As of right now, cogan says it's unclear who exactly was flying the plane. Cogan says both pilots are experienced and very safe conscious.
Both Campbell and Wittenberg were able to escape the wreckage by themselves. But they were taken to Johnson City Medical Center as a precaution. Saturday morning other pilots stopped by to inspect the site. "The look of the wreckage tells me that the wing took the brunt of the damage and maybe one of the landing gears," said Pratt.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board will be out in the coming days to investigate what exactly went wrong. Airport officials tell News 5, there are no safety issues surrounding the crash site, since the fuel from the plane has been removed
No comments:
Post a Comment