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Plane crash Sunday kills Stafford County man

This death was the second local plane-related fatality this week, but first at Shannon Airport since a skydiver died there in 1980.

Date published: 10/16/2006

By BILL FREEHLING

A Stafford County man died Sunday evening after his single-engine plane crashed at Shannon Airport, police said.

The 5:55 p.m. crash killed William Mitchell Strother III, said state police Sgt. F.L. Tyler. The 43-year-old was an aerospace engineer who received his private pilot’s license in 1989.

Strother was alone in the single-seater plane when it crashed into a field on the southwest side of Spotsylvania County’s Shannon Airport, Tyler said. He was killed on impact.

Strother was practicing take-offs and landings at the airport, Tyler said. After one landing, Strother took off back to the south but veered right and crashed into a private field.

Strother was the second person killed this past weekend in a Fredericksburg-area plane crash. Four more local men were killed earlier this year in a plane crash at the Stafford Regional Airport.

Strother’s death was the first fatality at Shannon Airport since a skydiver died there in 1980, said airport co-owner Robert Stanley.

The National Transportation Safety Board has a record of seven general aviation accidents at Shannon Airport since 1991, none of them fatal. The most recent two occurred in February 2002. Of the six reports that detail when the accident occurred, three were during the planes’ approach to the airport, two occurred during landings and one was on takeoff.

Strother flew his plane about three or four times a week from Shannon, Stanley said. He had been renting a hangar at Shannon for about a year.

“He was just a nice guy, very quiet guy, flying was his passion,” Stanley said.

No one saw the impact, according to state police Sgt. James Failor and Charlie Thompson, an aviation safety inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration. Stanley said Strother didn’t say anything over the radio about the plane going down. There was no fire, and the plane remained mostly intact after impact.

Strother’s plane was a Pazmany PL–4 experimental aircraft. The plane is classified as “experimental” because it was hand-built, in 1982.

The Pazmany PL–4 has a top speed of 120 mph and a cruise speed of 97 mph, according to the Pazmany Web site. Its wing span is 26.7 feet.

According to NTSB data, there have been five accidents involving Pazmany PL–4s since 1978 in addition to Sunday’s crash. Four of the accidents, including the only other fatality, were caused by pilot error. The other crash involved engine failure during testing.

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Date published: 10/16/2006