A small plane practicing “touch and go” landings at a Long Island airport crashed into two office building and burst into flames, badly burning the student pilot and his flight instructor, officials said.
David Rowe, 51, was performing landing practices at Long Island MacArthur Airport when the two-seater Beechcraft B19 plane crashed in Bohemia on Saturday.
Emergency crew airlifted the student pilot to Stony Brook University Hospital, where he was in serious condition with severe burns, according to Michael Stankunis, an assistant chief at the Bohemia Fire Department.
“My father has been hurt badly,” said Katie Rowe, 16, whose dad, a carpenter from Mount Sinai, was taken by medical helicopter to University Hospital in Stony Brook. He had burns to over 50 per cent of his body.
“I can’t believe he walked away from the crash,” Ms. Katie was quoted as saying by the Daily News .
David Jensen, a veteran employee of MidIsland Air Services, a flight school operating out of the airport, was in stable condition with second-degree burns, the paper said.
The aircraft, owned by Mr. Rowe, sheared off the tops of trees and slammed into two unoccupied buildings in the nearby industrial park around 3 p.m. Saturday.
An employee at Emergency Ambulance Service Corp., two buildings away, rushed to the crash site. “I really didn’t expect to see any survivors,” Bonnie Minckler said. She found one man about 25 yards from the burning plane. “He was pretty badly burned. He was saying, ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God.’”
“The plane is completely disintegrated. There’s nothing left,” said Michael Ruggiero, who owns a furniture factory near the crash site.
The Federal Aviation Authority is currently investigating the crash.
