The photos on the front page of Thursday's Butler Eagle dealing with Wednesday morning's plane crash at the Butler County Airport depicted a scene that seemed destined to negatively impact airport operations for months.

Fortunately, that won't be the case. Thanks to global positioning systems in place at the air facility, the airport continues to accommodate instrument flight conditions as well as routine flights.

That means revenue that would have been lost if instrument flights needed to be diverted elsewhere — money earned from fuel sales and tie-down fees, for example — will not be lost.

Meanwhile, amid the investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board into the cause of the crash — investigators from the two agencies still were at the airport Friday — the FAA has begun the planning to rebuild the instrument landing system tower that was damaged in the crash.

Don Bailey, airport manager, said Friday morning that a preliminary report dealing with the accident might be forthcoming from the federal agencies in about two to three weeks. That initial report hopefully will help alleviate concerns and questions about winter-weather maintenance at the airport.

Dana Carr, director of operations for Air Trek Air Ambulance of Punta Gorda, Fla., which owns the medical transport plane that was involved in Wednesday's crash, said the flight's captain attributed the accident to a snowy and icy runway.

"This is just an uncommon, unfortunate situation due to the climactic conditions," Carr said.

But Bailey downplayed the possibility that the crash resulted from the runway's condition.

While acknowledging that the runway had a light coating of snow at the time of the crash, he said the runway wasn't slippery.

The crash was an unfortunate development for the airport, which also experienced an accident in June 2005, which the NTSB blamed on "the pilot's decision to conduct the flight with a known equipment deficiency."

That plane's wing flaps were broken, and the plane also had a braking system problem.

Presumably, the two federal agencies also will be able to reach solid conclusions about what happened on Wednesday.

Like the crash in 2005, the plane that crashed here Wednesday was carrying four people. No one was injured in the 2005 crash and only minor injuries resulted from the latest accident.

But the potential for a result much more serious or tragic was present in both incidents.

Meanwhile, Penn Township firefighters can be excused for pondering whether there might be a better location for their fire station. The plane involved in the 2005 accident stopped 50 feet short of crashing into the station, and Wednesday's plane stopped about 50 yards short of hitting the station.

Fortunately, both the airport and the fire department can feel blessed that the accidents did not produce more devastating results.

A federal report exonerating the airport from having contributed in any way to the latest crash obviously is the hope of airport officials.

Until a report is forthcoming, people should resist making uninformed conclusions that might ultimately be determined to be false.

Despite the two crashes, the airport has an excellent safety record that deserves to be acknowledged by county residents, whether they use the flight facility or not.