Sad News - Plane Crash Near My House

I live about three blocks from the Kissimmee Municipal Airport. I've been here for over ten years. In that time, and up until today, I have known of only one fatal plane crash. That one happened in 2001 and involved a great friend and Christian missionary who took his Lance Air P4 Turbo for a test flight after doing some cosmetic work on it. He was to do a short hop around the pattern, land and go to church, it was a Wednesday evening. He ran his right fuel tank dry, killing the temperamental TSIO 540 Lycoming. He was at about 200 feet and couldn't get it restarted before hitting the ground. He impacted nearly vertically and the airspeed indicator showed 94 knots when I recovered it from the wreckage. Don't know why I'm sharing that story.

I got home a little while ago, after a few beers with my brother. I was in the garage looking at a spare tire for my VT 1100 when I heard a jet fly directly over my house. I dismissed it, even though it was highly irregular because I live so close to the airport that my house would never be in the landing path of a jet, at least not one that was operating properly. Then, about ten minutes later I heard a helicopter hovering nearby. I went outside and saw not one but four news helicopters hovering (funny how I thought that they look like vultures), in a line and facing west, directly toward the airport. Sh!t, I thought. I hopped on my bike and rode up to the main road, turned right and headed toward the mass of blue and red lights. The plane had hit the ground about 300 yards short of the airfield fence. I saw the main wing structure and the tail structure, separate but close. I called my brother, and he called a buddy of his who operates a mechanics shop on the field. He told me that the plane was a Grumman FJ9 Cougar, a retired Israeli military aircraft. The type remains to be seen. The pilot and passenger both perished in the crash. I have included a link and will post followup when it becomes available.

Plane Crash Article

Bummer. Prayers to the families.

Sad news indeed.

Prays for their families.

Thats so sad. We live next to a small airport as well. I think we have had only one fatal crash since we have lived here but heard about a few other crashes. One of the crashes turned out to be a young women who I used to go to church with as a kid. They do the airshows there each year and let me tell ya there are days we are watching t hose planes closely telling them to move over somewhere else, so if they crashed they wouldn't crash into our houses. somehow they never seem to hear us.

man thats rough. prayers for the family