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2 US Airways Pilots Die In Crashes

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TheDonger

She Bangs, She Bangs
Joined
Dec 20, 2004
Posts
77
This has not been a good week for flying...:(
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families. RIP...


Man killed in crash had restored plane
Aviation was his whole life, his wife says

http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1128767598902

For Fred Smith, flying was many things: a hobby, a job, a boyhood dream, a lifelong passion.
Smith belonged in the air.
"He loved aviation. That was his whole life," said his wife, Rita.
For decades, he had flown all over the world for US Airways. But the crash that killed him was just a few miles away from his home.
On Saturday evening, Smith, 58, was flying a single-engine AT-6D plane - a vintage military plane he had just finished restoring - when it crashed into woods near the Yadkin-Davie county line.


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http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/12929560.htm
Ft. Mill pilot dies in crash of ultralight

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Body found in wrecked plane near power lines after electricity outage
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[SIZE=-1]KYTJA WEIR[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=-1]Staff Writer[/SIZE]
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An ultralight aircraft crashed Monday afternoon in Lancaster County, S.C., killing the man at its helm.
Authorities learned of the crash because power failed in the area around 4 p.m.
When Duke Power employees followed the power lines into a remote area, they found the wreckage of an ultralight close to Locker Road near the N.C. border.
Allan Robert Eich, 50, of Fort Mill, S.C., was lying amid the wreckage. He had suffered head injuries, said Lancaster County Sheriff's Lt. Lee Blackmon, and died at the scene.
Authorities believe Eich crashed the single-person craft into the power lines around 4 p.m., when the electricity in the area failed. Then the plane fell from the wires to the ground.
Authorities were called to the scene just before 6 p.m., he said. The area is about a 30-minute walk into the woods, Blackmon said.
The Sheriff's Office is investigating the crash.
Eich had served as president of the Tara Plantation Home Owners Association, where he lived with his family. He also was an avid flier, displaying a photograph of a plane at the top of his personal Web site.
On the Web site, he recounted a near-death experience while flying, when at age 16, he took his first solo flight in a Cessna 150.
He wrote that he took the plane up and started to practice. But it started to whirl out of control.
"I had never seen a spin much less had any idea how to recover from one," he wrote of the 1971 incident.
"To put it mildly, I was in a lot of trouble. I was in a life or death situation and the death part was winning so I did the only thing that I could do," he wrote. "I cried out to the Lord, `God, please help me!' "
He survived, using what he called advice sent from God.
Eich went on to serve as a flight instructor at Kent State University, teaching new pilots how to safely escape such spins without relying on divine intervention.
 

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