More hurricane fatalities -- in a Skymaster
 

A family of four fleeing from the Florida Panhandle to avoid hurricane Ivan has been found. They had been missing for two weeks, since they departed the area in their Skymaster headed north. Radar track had been lost at 2:49 AM on September 15. The wreck of the Skymaster was found about 2 miles from the Magee, MS airport, about 40 miles from Jackson, MS. There were no survivors. For more details see
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...9836040.htm?1c

Ernie

That is sad -

He apparently was a 'student pilot' since June, and he made the decision to put his wife and two children in a plane (at night) to make this trip (illegally, if the stated facts on the Cival Air Patrol website are correct).

They made no comment on weather conditions at the time, but he was apparently trying to get out of town before the storm hit...

Like all too often, a series of bad decisions led up to a disasterous end-result.

[From webmaster: SkymstrO2 posted the contents of a news article on aero-news.net. I have changed this to a link to the article on their site, as this is copyrighted material and we do not have permission to reproduce it here. If this link does not work for you, try visiting the aero-news.net site directly, and look in their Top Stories section. -Kevin]

From areonews.net, 10-06-04

Missing Florida Family Found At Crash Site

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?C...-3c0e99bfb235&

Here is the latest update from Aero News...

http://www.aero-news.net/news/genav....0e81&Dynamic=1

Any pilot out there who has flown in Mississippi at night over somo of the most dence pine forest. will tel you that pilot probably got vertigo. there are areas where you cant see the horizon it is so dence especialy under an overcast.

Several years back my friend Congresman Larken Smith was leaving a little league baseball game from Hatiesburg in rout to GPT aboard a cardinal, the pilot got vertigo and they crashed killing them bouth.

Spacial disorientation is a big killer.

Francisco