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On March 1st, a Lancair Legacy 2000 crashed near Belen with two local pilots onboard. One was the airplane's owner, and the other was a well-known instructor, whom I met last at a fly-in in November. According to the TV chopper video and some private pictures that I saw, the plastic airplane disintegrated on impact, with most shards about a size of a book.

Although a crash wiki has an entry (last edited by Rob Finfrock), there is no NTSB report at this time, not even a preliminary, factual, or narrative.

Crash happened around 6 a.m., or about half an hour before sunrise. Perhaps they were trying to grab a time before winds picked up. I tried to land in Belen around 10 a.m. on March 2nd, and just could not do it, it was too windy.

P.S. I just noticed that Tim sold the airplane to George Westbrook, who I did not know, and it was George who crashed. That may explain why Chester had to be onboard: he was giving istruction to the owner. On the other hand, George was already owning the airplane when he ran out of runway back in 2008, so it was not a transition training flight.

UPDATE 2012-06-19: Preliminary report is out for CEN12FA174. Apparently they took off on rwy 21 and failed to gain any altitude in the darkness before colliding with the power lines.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 11:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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