An audio recording of airport radio broadcasts at the time of the accident shows an airborne emergency near the airport.
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Daniel J. Gross
| Greenville News
More than a week after a plane crash left metal shattered in a chimney above a damaged fuselage that landed below, the chief of the Donaldson Center Fire Department said he was surprised that the people on the plane had survived.
Chief Mike Sadler’s department helped care for the victims after the Nov. 24 accident in Greenville at the Donaldson Center, also called the South Carolina Aviation and Technology Center, which houses a public airport about two miles south of Interstate 85 south of Greenville.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the accident.
An NTSB spokesman said that no reports of the accident were available.
The pilot and a passenger suffered minor injuries, according to an FAA incident notice.
An incident report obtained by The Greenville News from the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office through a Freedom of Information Act request showed that police officers arrived at the scene of the accident when Greenville County Emergency Medical personnel were already was on site treating the two victims.
The men involved in the accident were Ken Bickel of Travelers Rest, 61, and Steve James Fitch, of Pickens, 65, according to the Sheriff’s Office report. Both were transported to Greenville Memorial Hospital.
Audio recording of airport radio broadcasts at the time of the accident
An audio recording of airport radio broadcasts posted on liveatc.net at the time of the accident shows an airborne emergency near the airport.
Posted in liveatc.net
The report did not say which man was flying. A review of FAA records shows that Bickel received a pilot’s license in January, although there is no pilot registration for Fitch.
Calls to phone numbers and emails sent to associated addresses in public records with Bickel and Fitch were not returned on Wednesday. No new information about his conditions was immediately available
The plane has a registered tail number of N5566J, according to the FAA. FAA records show that the 1968 Piper PA-32 single-wing plane is owned by Barton Kent Hershfield of Cape Coral, Florida, but Hershfield said in an email on Wednesday that he is no longer the owner of the plane.
“I sold it to someone else earlier this year, and they sold it again in October. I don’t know who the current owner is,” wrote Hershfield in the email. “Probably due to COVID-19, I assume that FAA records have not yet been updated to reflect the last two owners.”
What to know: New details on the accident at the Donaldson Center in Greenville
The incident report did not specify or speculate what may have caused the accident. A witness told delegates that he saw the plane flying towards the airport and heard the sound of the “engine shutting down” before “the engine was quiet”.
The plane hit a chimney and fell behind a building, according to deputies. A portion of the plane got stuck in the chimney after the fuselage fell to the ground.
The debris was removed from the chimney and around the site on Nov. 25, according to Sadler.
An FAA spokesman said the aircraft had taken off from the Donaldson Center and was flying in a traffic pattern for a runway at Donaldson when the accident happened. Earlier that day, the plane flew from Davis Field in Liberty to Donaldson, according to FlightAware, an aviation software and data services company that tracks aircraft and flights.
Davis Field in Liberty is a private grass runway about 850 feet long, according to skyvector.com, an aviation website that lists aeronautical charts and airport information. A deputy reported that the plane had been stored in the Davis field.
An audio recording of airport radio broadcasts posted on liveatc.net at the time of the accident shows an airborne emergency near the airport. Just before the accident, the unidentified pilot reports a problem before communication is interrupted.
Pilot: “We have a problem.”
Tower: “Are you okay?”
Pilot: “Negative”.
About a minute later, airport tower staff instruct rescuers to reach the end of the runway.
The Donaldson Center is the site of a former Air Force base that was purchased by the city and county of Greenville before it was transformed into the South Carolina Aviation and Technology Center. The city of Greenville and Greenville County now have joint ownership and equal to SCTAC, according to county spokesman Bob Mihalic.
SCTAC has 2,600 acres and operations for more than 100 companies, and is considered the only business park in the Southeast dedicated to meeting the dynamic needs of the automotive, aerospace and advanced manufacturing sectors. An 8,000-foot runway at Donaldson Field Airport is supervised by a 91-foot air traffic control tower, according to the SCTAC website.
Come back to learn more about this development story.
Tamia Boyd is from Michigan and covers the latest news. Send an email to [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @tamiamb.