Holiday season airplane crashes have destroyed at least two families this year. It has not been a very merry time.
Last month at Thanksgiving a pilot, his three children, and an aircraft mechanic died when their plane crashed into the Superstition Mountains not far from Scottdale, Ariz.
And on Tuesday morning five people — including a married couple, their two children and their dog — were killed in an accident in Morris Township, N.J., when their plane crashed on a busy highway, Route 287. The aircraft barely missed hitting a pickup truck when it nosedived near the highway, bursting into flames.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/12/nj_plane_crash.html
The anguish that the survivors of both these families must be feeling, in what should be a jolly time of the year, must be unimaginable.
The New Jersey accident took the lives of Jeffrey Buckalew and his wife Corinne, both 45, their son Jackson, 11, their daughter Meriweather, 9, and their pet dog, according to The Star-Ledger of Newark. Buckalew’s colleague at an investment banking firm in Manhattan, Rakesh Chawla, 36, also perished.
Buckalew was the pilot of the plane, and had his pilot’s license for about a decade, according to The Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577110493871800040.html
Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) ended their recovery efforts about 6 p.m. Tuesday at nightfall, noting that the effort was going moving along slower than expected because of the heavy traffic on busy Route 287, according to The Ledger. Parts of the plane, a Socata TBM-700m were strewn on the hghway.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/12/5_killed_in_plane_crash_in_mor.html
The plane had taken off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and was en route to DeKalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta. The crash, whose cause is under investigation, happened just 15 minutes after the plane’s takeoff, The Ledger reported.
Buckalew had discussed ‘icy conditions with air traffic control shortly after takeoff. He and his family were going to spend the holidays with his inlaws.
Both he and Chawla were managing directors at Greenhill & Co.