‘Brutal’ Conditions For Trenton Plane Crash
By Bill Trotter/BDN
TRENTON—A witness who saw the July 25 plane crash that killed two people at the Trenton airport told federal investigators that visibility was “brutal” when the small aircraft tried to land.
In a preliminary report, the National Transportation Safety Board said a technician was repairing landing lights on the runway at the Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport when he heard the sound of an approaching airplane just before 12:30 p.m. The technician told investigators that he could barely see the small plane when it emerged from thick fog about 100 yards away.
“He heard the airplane’s engine noise go to full power and when he looked up at the airplane, he noticed that it was in a sharp left turn before it descended to ground impact,” the report said.
The witness was not identified in the report.
Michael Leibowitz, 71, of Charleston, South Carolina, was piloting the fixed-wing single-engine Cirrus SR22 with a passenger, 57-year-old Christina Chung of Livingston, New Jersey, officials have said. Leibowitz and Chung took off from Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey earlier in the day and were approaching the Trenton airport when they crashed.
Leibowitz was the founder of Call Experts, a telecommunications services company that he established in that state in 1982, according to a report on the crash by The Post and Courier newspaper. He also was an avid runner who posted dozens of photos of himself and his medals from races around the country on his Facebook page.
There were others who witnessed the accident. Sam Wilson, who works at a business near the airport, told the Bangor Daily News on the day of the crash that he was outside when he heard and then saw the plane come out of the clouds.
He said the plane appeared upside down as it approached the runway from the north, but then veered to the east and crashed into a fence at the edge of the woods. The plane caught fire and exploded immediately upon impact, he said.
A passing motorist recorded video of the crash as she drove past the airport on Route 3.
“The video showed the airplane appearing from heavy fog about 40 feet above the approach end of runway in a steep, descending turn to the left before impacting the ground,” the NTSB preliminary report said.
Data of weather conditions at the airport indicated visibility of 1.5 miles in light rain and mist, and an overcast ceiling at altitude of 300 feet, according to the report.
The federal agency typically releases final reports of place crashes within months after a fatal accident. There have been only six other fatal airplane crashes in Maine in the past decade, all of which involved small private aircraft, according to the NTSB. Ten people total died in those previous crashes, which date back to Jan. 1, 2014.
Prior to July 25, the most recent fatal crash at the Trenton airport was in 1996, when a plane that investigators later estimated to be overweight crashed shortly after takeoff. The pilot died but a passenger survived.
This story appears through a media partnership with the Bangor Daily News.
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