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Three uninjured in crash-landing at Bishop airport |
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 |
 Bishop Fire Chief Ray Seguine (in white shirt) directs his crew’s efforts at the scene of a plane crash at the Eastern Sierra Regional Airport in Bishop. The colorful, single-engine Maule aircraft crashed immediately following take-off when its engine began losing power. Photo by Darcy Ellis By Ken Koerner
Register Staff 3-11-2008
What goes up must come down. Sometimes sooner than expected.
That was the lesson learned Friday afternoon by three Columbia, Calif. men who walked away unharmed from a downed aircraft at the Eastern Sierra Regional Airport in Bishop, after mechanical trouble caused the plane to make an unscheduled and very rough landing. The pilot reported his plane began experiencing engine problems immediately after lift-off.
“We had just dropped in to the Bishop airport to take on some fuel before crossing the mountains,” pilot and plane owner Tom Praisler said, “and as soon as the plane was airborne again something went south. I started hearing cylinders mis-firing and we were losing power. At that point, I told the guys to hold on, we were going to have to set her down fast.”
It was just before 3 p.m. Friday when the single-engine Maule aircraft’s engine began to fail.
“I banked into a turn and started returning back toward runway 1-2 where we’d just taken off from,” said Praisler. “I got as far back over the runway as I felt I could and then put her down … there wasn’t enough runway left and we ended up in the sand run-off at the end of the pavement. When I saw there was a fence coming up fast, I just said, ‘Hang on,’ and pulled a ground-loop.”
A ground-loop, the pilot explained, is spinning the aircraft quickly; it’s an evasive maneuver that in this instance, according to Praisler, prevented his plane from running into the barbed-wire fence that was “coming up fast.”
Praisler’s two passengers and longtime friends, Tom Cornett and Robert Marsden, were shaken but reportedly unafraid during the experience.
“Tom’s been flying since he was 18 years old – and I’ve flown with him many times before,” said passenger Tom Cornett. “I really couldn’t say I was fearful when he said, ‘We’re going down,’ because of my confidence in Tom; but I can tell you there was a big adrenaline dump running through my body.”
Marsden echoed that sense of trust in his friend. “Tom’s got 40-plus years of flying experience,” Marsden said. “I figured we’d end up being OK with Tom at the controls.”
Local emergency responders were quick to the scene when the call came out that “a plane is down.” Bishop Fire Chief Ray Seguine was first on the scene, immediately followed by a crew and engine racing to the crashed plane’s location at the far south end of the airfield.
Upon arrival, Seguine explained, a determination was made that no significant fire threat existed and that none of those on board the aircraft required medical attention. There was, however, a small amount of fuel leaking from the plane’s damaged right wing. A container was quickly in place to contain the dripping fuel and firefighters used a simple shut-off device to stop the leak from continuing.
The pink plane was not extensively damaged in the crash-landing. From skid marks at the scene, airport officials and Praisler determined that when the pilot executed his “ground-loop” the soft sand caused the right landing gear to bury and then break, leading to the right side of the plane’s main wing and tail-wing being crumpled from the resulting impact.
The three men were part of a larger party that was traveling together in two separate aircraft. They had flown across the Sierra Nevada to “spend a few days camping in the Saline Valley.” Praisler, Cornett and Marsden were headed back home a day earlier than their friends traveling in the other plane.
“The trip over from Columbia to Saline probably didn’t take more than an hour-and-a-half,” Praisler said, “but it’s sure going to take us a lot longer to get ourselves and this airplane back home again.”
A report was made to the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Agency, as is the case with any airplane crash. No immediate explanation was apparent to the pilot as to why his engine began to fail after the refueling stop.
While exchanging hugs and smiles in the Eastern Sierra Regional Airport Terminal an hour after the crash, there was no doubt among the three men that their good fortune on that Friday afternoon far out-weighed their bad luck.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 11 April 2008 )
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