Enquirer News Update - Updated 10:04 a.m.
[font=arial,helvetica]Cargo plane crashes near CVG; one dead[/font] [font=arial,helvetica][/font]
[font=arial,helvetica]Cargo plane crashes near CVG; one dead[/font] [font=arial,helvetica][/font]
The Cincinnati Enquirer
and The Associated Press
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Investigators look at the tail section of a DHL cargo plane that crashed early today.
(AP photo)
(Pat Reddy photo)
[/font][font=arial,helvetica]VIDEO [/font][font=arial,helvetica]
[/font]FLORENCE - A cargo plane carrying two people crashed early Friday near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, killing one of two people on board, an airport spokesman said.
Airport spokesman Ted Bushelman said the pilot walked away from the crash and was taken to the hospital. The co-pilot's body was found after daybreak, several hours after the crash, Bushelman said.
The pilot was taken to a local hospital for treatment, but the hospital was not named.
Authorities have not identified either member of the flight crew.
The plane took off last night from Memphis, Tenn. and crashed around 1 a.m. into the city of Florence's World of Sports golf course off Woodpoint Road.
Woodpoint runs north from Burlington Pike, east and parallel to Houston Road, before Woodpoint veers back to the west and joins Houston.
"He was coming in for a landing. It was less than a mile from the runway," Bushelman said.
The plane broke apart near some trees lining one of the golf course fairways.
Air Tahoma, a Columbus-based contractor for DHL, flew the airplane Bushelman said.
The company supports many major overnight express companies and companies utilizing just in time inventory systems. All scheduled and heavy maintenance on company aircraft is accomplished at its Rickenbacker maintenance facility. In addition, all dispatch and operations planning are performed at Rickenbacker Airport.
Air Tahoma was founded by Noel Rude in 1996 and is headquartered at Rickenbacker Airport, according to the company's Web site. Air Tahoma is a spin-off from Cool Air, Inc., which was founded in 1986 by Noel Rude and his father Bud Rude, who is a life long veteran of the airline industry.
The company, which has governmental approval to fly domestically and to Canada and Mexico, works for many major overnight express companies and companies utilizing just in time inventory systems. All scheduled and heavy maintenance on company aircraft is accomplished at its Rickenbacker maintenance facility. In addition, all dispatch and operations planning are performed at Rickenbacker Airport.
The FBI was investigating and told local authorities not to touch anything at the crash scene, Bushelman said. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were expected to arrive later Friday.
Houston Road was closed for a time this morning due to the crash, but was reopened. The airport remained opened despite the crash, although runway 36R, which is where the plane was to land, was closed between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.
The last major disaster near or at the local airport was on June 2, 1983, when the lavatory of Air Canada DC-9 caught fire in flight and landed at CVG. Twenty-three were killed.
One person died when a TWA Boeing 707 crashed on take off at CVG on June 11, 1967.
But the worst local air disaster occurred on Aug. 11, 1965, when an American Airlines Boeing 727 crashed on landing at the airport. Fifty-eight people died.
Safety records for neither Air Tahoma nor the plane that crashed Friday were immediately available.
A DHL-operated Boeing 757 collided in July 2002 over Ueberlingen, Germany (in the southern province of Baden-Wuerttemberg, across the Bodensee from Austria) with another jet. A Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev TU-154 that responded late to an air traffic controller's orders to descend to avoid a crash hit the DHL jet. The two-person flight crews on both planes were killed. A DHL Airbus 300 was hit last November shortly after takeoff from the Baghdad International Airport by a surface-to-air missile. The flight crew landed the plane successfully, despite serious damage to one of the jet's wings.
