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The sputtering singleengine experimental plane was about
100 feet above the LongBow Golf Club, directly east of Mesa’s Falcon Field
Municipal Airport, when it suddenly swung to the left, said Alexander and
partner Jean Wylie.
"As soon as the wing hit the ground, it just
exploded," Wylie said.
The plane crashed and ignited a fireball
about 7:15 a.m. on the fairway of the 15th hole. It had taken off only
seconds earlier with a full tank of fuel from the airport.
Two men
died in the crash, Mesa police Sgt. Chuck Trapani said.
Because of
the extent of the fire and the absence of an official flight record,
police said they could not positively identify the victims until dental
records could be matched.
According to the Federal Aviation
Administration civil aircraft registry, the plane, a 1993 Glasair II-F,
belonged to a David Houx in Ada, Ohio, said Paul Turk, an FAA spokesman
out of Washington, D.C.
A company at the airport called Phoenix
Composites specializes in selling the same make of experimental plane that
crashed.
Employees at the company, however, said Saturday they
could not discuss whether it was connected to the crash.
Eight
people have died this year either flying out of or into Falcon Field
airport.
Mark Freeman, a spokesman for the Mesa Fire Department,
said the plane had been prepped the night before for a "check-off"
maintenance flight Saturday morning.
The pilot, immediately after
takeoff, issued what Freeman called a "declaration of emergency" so other
pilots in the area would stay clear.
"They tried to come back to
the airport and ended up crashing on the fairway," he said.
An
airport tower employee saw the plane was having problems on takeoff and
alerted the on-site fire station.
Alexander and Wylie were first
to arrive at the burning plane, where flames were already 30 feet high.
"I wanted to see if I could help, but obviously I couldn’t,"
Alexander said. "It was engulfed."
Jay Larscheid, with the LongBow
golf course, said the FAA ordered the back nine holes of the course closed
for the investigation.
He said that while no golfers were on the
15th hole at the time of the crash, a shotgun golf tournament was about to
start.
"If this had happened 15 minutes later, we would have had
dozens of golfers here," he said.
Timeline
Timeline of 2004
deaths on aircraft flying out of or into Mesa’s Falcon Field Municipal
Airport
Jan. 5: One man died when the plane he flew for Air West
crashed en route to Colorado.
Feb. 17: Two men died when their
experimental aircraft went down in Apache Junction.
May 31: Two
men died when their biplane crashed near the Beeline Highway after
takeoff.
June 24: One man died attempting to land a helicopter on
a flatbed trailer at the airport.
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