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OGDEN — Last week's crash of a small airplane in a residential neighborhood outside Ogden-Hinckley Airport is the latest of several in the Roy area dating to 2010, sporadic occurrences that have sparked on-and-off concern and debate over the years.
The head of the flight school that owns the craft, though, lauded the quick thinking of the pilot in guiding the ailing craft to the ground, minimizing the potential damage and destruction. The pilot and passenger in the twin-engine Piper PA-34 Seneca survived, and no one on the ground was injured, though a home in the Roy neighborhood where the crash occurred sustained roof damage caused by a tree branch downed as the airplane descended.
"It was an instructional flight with probably my second most experienced instructor. Thank goodness it was him," said Martin O'Laughlin, president of Cornerstone Aviation, which operates out of Ogden and Salt Lake City.
It's the first airplane mishap causing an injury in 21 years for Cornerstone, which flies "hundreds of times per week," O'Laughlin said. But since 2010, at least four other small airplanes heading to the Ogden airport or taking off from it — none associated with Cornerstone — have crashed into Roy homes or streets. Another 2017 crash of a small airplane onto I-15 in nearby Riverdale, after it took off from Ogden-Hinckley Airport, killed the four occupants of the craft.
Roy High School, Sand Ridge Junior High School and Valley View Elementary sit near the July 24 crash site, and O'Laughlin said the pilot purposefully steered clear of them in case people were using the fields around the schools. Instead, he picked a nearby street, 2350 West, thinking trees along the street would slow the craft as it came down.
"In other words, he didn't lose his poise like the last couple of crashes, where people have stalled the airplane and then not had any control over where they went down," O'Laughlin said. The pilot, who he didn't name, maintained enough speed to keep control of the airplane, "and that allowed him to pick some trees and a road, and that's why there wasn't any more damage on the ground."
The passenger in the airplane, a female flight student at Cornerstone, sustained gashes to her chin and above her ear, while the pilot sustained a broken vertebra but has been released from the hospital after surgery.
"It was a miracle that those two pilots survived. And it certainly was a miracle that (the) aircraft didn't land on the top of one of those houses," said Roy Mayor Bob Dandoy. "I can't even imagine how it was able to weave through all of that and those people survived it, but that's not always going to be the case."
The July 24 crash is the focus of separate investigations by the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and Cornerstone, which could take months to complete. O'Laughlin, though, said the plane — which had been approaching the Ogden airport, less than a mile northeast of the crash site — sustained some sort of power loss.
"What we know is there was a partial power loss," O'Laughlin said, further alluding to the heat that day and noting that "airplanes don't like to perform when it's that hot." The temperature on July 24 in Roy peaked at 103 degrees Fahrenheit, according to AccuWeather.
A Jan. 15, 2020, crash of an airplane into a town house in Roy killed the pilot of the craft and sparked an outcry in the city about the proximity of the Ogden airport to residential areas. No one on the ground was injured, but Roy residents and officials publicly debated possible action to contend with the issue in the aftermath of the incident. Carl Merino, the Roy police chief at the time, issued a statement saying city leaders, federal aviation authorities and Ogden airport representatives would work together "to attempt to find a common denominator which can be corrected to remove this danger to our citizens."
Fast-forward to the present, and the proximity of the airport to Roy is still cause for some consternation. Dandoy broached the idea of moving the airport to the undeveloped expanses of western Weber County, where "(we would) certainly be able to control encroachment."
Matt Gwynn, the current Roy police chief, though, suggested a permanent fix may be a tall order. "The only way this will stop is when we have perfect pilots operating aircraft that have components that will never fail," he said in a statement.
Roy City Manager Matt Andrews said the notion of moving the airport would be a question for Ogden officials, while Mike McBride, spokesman for Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski, said the topic hasn't come up. "We've never talked about moving the airport," McBride said.
McBride noted the stringent local and FAA guidelines airport officials must follow and the yearly inspections the facility faces by federal regulators. "Ogden is committed to the safety and well-being of our community and that of our neighboring communities," he said.
As for the proximity of homes to the airport, O'Laughlin noted development pressures over the years that have filled the empty spaces that previously served as a buffer.
The airport was built at its current site in 1941, "when there was nothing out here but farmland," O'Laughlin said. "And now they keep developing the farmland into apartments and neighborhoods."
Furthermore, he noted the rarity of airplane crashes relative to the "hundreds of operations" at the airport each day and the lack of deaths of people on the ground when accidents occur. A woman driving a car on 1900 West in Roy sustained injuries when an airplane struck the vehicle in 2017, but she survived.
"We are extremely sympathetic that the people in Roy are very sensitive to this, and we get it," O'Laughlin said. "But it is also important to remind people that the airport was here 84 years ago and none of the neighborhoods that these unfortunate things have occurred in was around when the airport was put here."
Contributing: Britt Johnson
