South Windsor Couple Killed In Plane Crash | News

From the Hartford Courant

South Windsor Couple Killed In Plane Crash

Courant Staff Report,

May 9, 2008, 4:05 PM EDT

Two people who died Thursday afternoon when their homemade aircraft crashed in North Carolina were identified this afternoon as South Windsor residents Mark Sobel and his wife, Joan Wilson.

Sobel, who was piloting the plane, was flying to Brainard Airport in Hartford around 1:30 p.m. when their plane crashed near Snow Hill, N.C. The Lancair airplane crashed in open farmland in the southwestern part of Greene County, about 20 miles soutwest of Greenville, around 1:30 p.m. Thursday, officials said.

Sobel and Wilson were both 56.

Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman with the Federal Aviation Administration, said the plane was flying from Page Field in Fort Meyers, Fla. to Hartford-Brainard Airport. She said the plane was destroyed by fire.

Prior to the crash, the pilot reported having icing on the wings, said Patty McQuillan, spokeswoman for the state Department of Crime Control and Public Safety in North Carolina. Officials said that weather in the area had been warm Thursday. The plane disappeared from radar and lost radio contact, she said.

The plane crashed in a farm field several hundred feet from a residential area near Snow Hill, located about 20 miles southwest of Greenville, Bergen said.

It had taken off from Page Field in Fort Myers, Fla., she said.

The FAA web site indicates the plane was a Lancair IV-P, a homebuilt, amateur plane completed in 2003.

Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, Bergen said. The Civil Air Patrol also was called because the incident was first reported as a missing aircraft, McQuillan said.