Pf Man Dies In Small Plane Crash Cda Pilot Survives Crash At Sea-Tac Airport

A Post Falls man was killed and Coeur d’Alene man injured Friday when a small plane crashed on a grassy knoll outside Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The crash killed the lone passenger, identified by the King County medical examiner’s office as Theodore K. Harris Jr., 39, of Post Falls. The Coeur d’Alene pilot’s name was not immediately released; he remained in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center.

The plane left Coeur d’Alene on what was supposed to be a flight to Boeing Field. However, it was off course just before the crash when the pilot reported engine trouble, an investigator said Saturday.

The pilot of the twin-engine Beechcraft Baron initially thought he was approaching Paine Field in Everett on Friday evening when he was actually closer to Boeing Field in Seattle, about 40 miles south, said Debra Eckrote, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

Air-traffic controllers had cleared the plane to land at Boeing Field, but it crashed near Sea-Tac Airport, a few miles south.

“They tried to direct him to Boeing Field. We don’t know how he wound up at Sea-Tac,” Eckrote said.

The plane clipped a utility pole, cartwheeled and slammed into a grassy area near a multi-story parking garage just southeast of the Seattle area’s major airport on the west side of Highway 99.

Authorities initially reported that the pilot died and the passenger survived. But Eckrote said the confusion arose because would-be rescuers had pulled the passenger nearly into the right-front pilot’s seat before being driven away by flames.

Witnesses said the plane narrowly missed the seven-story Wyndham Gardens Hotel and the 11-story Sea-Tac Office Tower.

“How he missed two lines of cars, I don’t know,” said Renee Maurel, a Northwest Airlines employee who was taking a break about 50 yards from the crash site.

“He picked about the only spot where it wouldn’t have been crowded with people.”

Joseph Koehler, a security guard who witnessed the crash, said the pilot kept revving his engines in an apparent effort to make the field.

“It still amazes me how he missed the Wyndham and the tower,” Koehler said. “That pilot had to do some fighting.”

“He could have landed at Pacific Highway South and hit some cars. He could have run into a building. That was about the only open area he had available to him in that particular area,”Eckrote said.

No one on the ground was injured.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Cynthia Pivetta said it’s possible the pilot overflew Boeing Field because he was distracted by an engine problem.

“One of his last transmissions was that he lost an engine,” Eckrote said. “We do have witnesses that reported anywhere from a dead engine to a couple of pilots on the highway who said both props (propellers) were turning but that it sounded like it was idle power,” Eckrote said.

Investigators were waiting for the pilot’s condition to improve so he could be interviewed. They also planned to review air traffic communications and radar data.

The wreckage, which was cleared and in storage on Port of Seattle property, will also be examined.

Eckrote said the investigation into the cause of the crash could take one to two months.

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