Pilot, 73, gets a bump on the head
PENN TWP — John Ehrhart of Royal Oak Drive switched off the motor on his lawn tractor around noon Thursday when he heard a distinct “bang” in the horse pasture that abuts his yard.
“I said, 'Is that a plane?'” Ehrhart recalled.
He shouted to his girlfriend to call 911 and ran in the direction of the noise, where he found an experimental two-passenger aluminum airplane and the pilot who built it: Michael Axelrad, 73, of Pittsburgh.
The plane took out about 50 feet of wooden fencing in the corner of a large pasture where two uninterested horses were grazing.
“By the time I got there, he was moving around,” Ehrhart was pleased to report. “He just got a bump on the head, that's all.”
Axelrad, sporting a small bandage on his head, eventually emerged from the brushy corner of the pasture where the plane came down. He was accompanied by Penn and Middlesex Township police and airport officials, as the township firefighters and Butler EMS ambulance crew had already left the scene of the minor accident.
A surprisingly calm Axelrad explained that he took off at the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport traveling west, banked to the left after reaching about 800 feet in altitude, and was turning to face the airport when the engine quit.
“I looked for a place to land and this was the best I could do,” Axelrad said.
The pilot of nearly five decades had built the small plane over a period of 20 years and had been flying it for two years. The plane had been parked at a hangar at the airport.
Axelrad said he lost a piston mid-air May 1, but managed to land back at the airport. He rebuilt the engine and was taking the craft on a test run Thursday morning.
“Apparently I didn't do something right,” he said of the rebuild.
Axelrad said the thick brush on the northwest corner of the pasture absorbed most of the impact, which prevented more serious injuries.
“I'm done with that plane,” Axelrad said. “At least today I am.”
He praised the emergency responders who arrived almost immediately after the crash.
“The EMS and fire department and police were very helpful and most professional,” Axelrad said.
Officer Cheryl Cranmer of the Penn Township police department said Axelrad must be an exemplary pilot, as only the plane's propeller appears to have obvious damage.
“Otherwise it looks intact,” Cranmer said.
She said the plane came down about 1.5 miles from the airport.
Carissa Spencer, who owns the pasture and horses along with her husband, Ted, rushed home from work after learning of the crash.
She, too, was glad Axelrad only suffered a minor injury, but she wondered how the plane would be removed from the far corner of the pasture.
Axelrad said the wings and wheels would be removed from the extremely light aircraft, and the fuselage could be dragged out of the pasture using a tow truck.
He told Spencer his insurance would pay to replace the fence and any damage done in removing the plane.
Axelrad said the plane is no longer airworthy and he plans to move on to a different aircraft.
Thursday marked the first time Axelrad had brought a plane down anywhere but on a runway.
“I hope it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said.
