Richard Bryan sped down the grass runway of the Bladenboro Airport in his pickup truck toward the dust cloud, fearing the worst and praying for the best.
When the former grocery store owner and longtime aviation enthusiast and pilot arrived on scene, the GlasAir was torn to pieces. Climbing out of the ditch, however, were the two occupants of the small plane. The man and woman had only minor cuts.
“I was just hoping they weren’t hurt,” Bryan said Sunday afternoon, a day after the pilot lost control on takeoff and veered into the ditch, flipping the plane. “When I saw them crawling out of the ditch, I said ‘Thank goodness they’re alive.’ The plane was torn apart. How they survived that is that the good Lord was riding with them. He had to be.”
The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to be in Bladenboro some time this week to investigate the accident that happened Saturday about 4:45 p.m.
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The names of people in the plane were not available. They had planned to fly the plane to Waycross, Georgia, after the man had purchased the plane from Bobby Hester earlier in the week. The woman was the pilot. After the pair were treated and released from Bladen County Hospital on Saturday, they rented a car and planned on driving back to Waycross, Bryan said.
The GlasAir had been built as part of a kit several years ago by Herb Sanderson of Pembroke. Now 86 years old, Sanderson has stopped piloting, and had sold the plane to Hester. Sanderson visited the scene of the accident Sunday and was surprised the two people were able to climb out of the plane on their own.
Although the woman had never flown the plane, she had logged more than 2,000 hours as a pilot, including time spent in Alaska flying float planes, Bryan said. She taxied up and down the runway several times to get the feel of the plane, then prepared for takeoff. The pilot and passenger waved from the cockpit to J.D Edwards, Hester and Bryan, and she planned to start takeoff after passing a downed tree to the right of the runway.
“When she got past the tree, the tail was off the ground,” said Bryan, who had gone onto the runway to watch the takeoff, “but all of a sudden I heard her cut power and it started fish-tailing. She ran back and forth (across the runway), then the wing hit the ditch bank (on the left).
“From where I was, the only thing I saw was the tail go up in the air, and it flipped over. Then all I saw was a dust cloud.”
Bryan ran to his pickup, called for help, and raced to the scene. “I could have probably lifted off if I had had wings on (the truck),” he said.
“I was glad they were getting out it. The plane had full fuel in the wings. When I saw them getting out, I told the 911 dispatcher, they were alright. They were getting out of the airplane.”
The plane was destroyed. It’s fuselage lying at about a 45 degree angle on the edge of the embankment, the wings broke off, the inside of the plane shattered, and parts scattered.
As to what caused the accident, that will be left up to investigators, but Bryan said the pilot told him that she couldn’t get enough lift and was planning to taxi down to the other end of the runway and try to take off from that end.
“There’s a little lever that you pull and it locks that tail wheel in so it won’t swivel when you’re taking off,” Bryan said. “I don’t know if it didn’t catch that tail wheel. When she set it back down, that’s when she lost control of the plane.”
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