The pilots of two aircraft that crashed into the air that two people had killed were reportedly heard before the impact.
NASA engineer Michael Reinath, 70, and his passenger Linda Gifford, 76, were killed on February 19 when their Lancair 360 Mk II clashed with a Cessna 172 with two others.
An eyewitness said they heard the pilots screaming against each other before the crash, whereby someone reportedly shouted: “You broke me down” just before the impact, according to a police report obtained by 13 news.
The report described how the propeller of the Cessna hit the tail of the Lancair and it smelled that it crashed in a fiery Inferno on the Marana Airport near Tucson, Arizona.
The Cessna bore a pilot and student and managed to land safely without injuries.
The Cessna pilot practiced 'maneuvers' when they saw the other plane approach, according to the police report.
She said that Reinath said he would break down the landing and she assumed that he would avoid the Lancair.
A witness on the ground blamed the Lancair Pilot – Reinath – claimed that he was cut for the Cessna and had cut his tail wing through the Cessna propeller.
Michael Reinath, the pilot of an airplane that crashed in another plane that killed him and his passenger, was heard with the other pilot before Impact
The Lancair 360 Mk II, a small 'experimental' plane with two seats, was reduced to the smoldering of rubble when it collapsed in Marana Airport near Tucson on Wednesday morning
The Cessna 172S and a Lancair 360 Mk II struck each other when approaching the runway, cut off the tail wing of the Lancair and sent it to the ground
The only damage to the Cessair plane, said witnesses, was the propeller
'The guilty aircraft was a self -built called Lancair 4, who overtaken the Cessna on the right and caught up the Cessna and separated the left of the Lancair [tail] Wing, does half a roll to the left and lands in reverse in the ditch to the left of the runway, “said Jerry Witt.
“The propeller was the only damage on the 172.”
Witt said that the Cessna was on a training flight and that the instructor could hang the damaged plane around and on to the runway.
“It was a miracle that the Cessna pilots (an instructor and her student) were not killed,” he said.
“The instructor made a fraction of a second decision to try to let her plane fly and came back and landed.”
Another pilot who said he was in the air during the crash shared radio traffic in the last seconds.
“I heard the Lancaire pilot make a radio call seconds for the collision and said,” Rondbaan 12 go again, “he said.
'Only a few seconds after that radio telephone do you hear someone screaming and screaming. [Cessna] The emergency situation explains that they would turn around and land on runway 30. '
The Cessna 172S was on a training flight and the instructor was able to take the damaged plane around and through to the runway
Authorities said the collision concerned a Lancair 360 MKII (left) and a Cessna 172S (right, both planes seen in stock photos)
Like many small airports, Marana has no air traffic tower.
It is based on pilots who maintain visual contact with other aircraft and communicate on a common traffic advice frequency radio.
The construction of one is planned, but not until 2027 after it was delayed by the Covid Pandemie.
Reinath was a NASA engineer who had built the Lancair for more than 10,000 hours, his friend Jeff Budner told KCRA.
