Saturday, February 16, 2008 - 4:19 pm
PORTLAND, Ore. — A small plane crashed and burned Saturday at Portland International Airport, killing at least one person, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
An FAA spokesman, Mike Fergus, told The Associated Press that the plane, a single-engine Lancaire, burned and scattered wreckage on the runway after crashing just short of it while trying to land.
Fergus said he did not know how many people were on board.
He said the plane was built in 2005 and certified as air-worthy.
Port of Portland spokesman Steve Johnson said the crash closed the airport for about 20 minutes until 9:30 a.m. He said three arrivals and five departures were affected.
Visibility at the airport at the time of the crash was a quarter-mile or less, said Dan Keirns, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. It was not immediately known if visibility was a factor.
The crash was near the west end of the south runway.
Saturday, February 16, 2008 - 6:10 pm
OKAY, now thats been more than a few of those Lancairs that they build out in Redmond, OR that has crashed lately . . . Yikes! I'm wondering if its the homebuilt version that are crashing or the factory production ones?
http://www.lancair.com/
Monday, February 18, 2008 - 12:44 am
New information -- the Lancair that crashed at PDX was a production one -- loaded with more avionics than many jetliners. I'm wondering if he was flying IFR or VFR. Can you even fly into PDX on VFR these days?
The Lancair that crashed in Albany was a homebuilt.
The production Lancairs are now made by Cessna and these planes are called the Cessna 400 or the Columbia 400.
Monday, February 18, 2008 - 9:23 am
The news reported that the visibility in fog was between 1/8 and 1/4 mile, and they said that it would have been a category 3 approach so I'm guessing that the landing phase of the flight was IFR anyway.
The report I heard on either KOIN or KGW, I don't remember which, said that the DR. was a very experienced pilot.
We'll probably never know exactly what caused the crash.
On another note, quite a while back, we had a discussion about Evergreen Airport being closed and sold off. A question was raised in that discussion as to whether or not the North/South runway, which I believe is a separate "airport", was closed or not.
I'm happy to report that I was at Winco on 137th and saw an airplane taking off on that runway, so I guess that part is still open.
I know I'd be real PO'd if I paid a bunch of money for one of those houses so I could keep my airplane in my backyard and then they closed the runway!
