Cessna removed from crash site
PENN TWP — Retrieving a Cessna plane Monday from its crash site just off the runway at the Butler County Airport took a dozen skilled men several hours and a big boom.
So large was the 275-ton crane needed to hoist the plane that airport officials had to get special permission from the state Department of Transportation just to trek it over public roads on three flatbed tractor trailers.
Stephen P. Jackowski of Advanced Aircraft Maintenance in Rostraver, hired to do the salvage, said an average backhoe could haul the 5,750-pound plane. However, the problem, he said was the plane's location: about 135 feet down a steep embankment.
The airplane, a 1979 Cessna 340A twin-engine aircraft, careened off the 4,801-foot runway and over the embankment March 16 during an aborted takeoff. The pilot, owner and sole occupant — 60-year-old Safdar Khwaja of Murrysville — was not injured.
In the week since the crash, the $250,000 plane has been half in a ditch on the hillside as officials ironed out a plan to move it and as the FAA completed its on-site investigation.
Airport manager Roy Uptegraff said officials first tried to make arrangements to lift the plant with a 20-ton crane operator. Then they looked at a 30-ton crane, but finally it became obvious that something much larger would be needed.
The crane used has a 162-foot boom usually used for construction of large buildings and locating air conditioning units on high rooftops, said owner Kyrk Pyros of Allegheny Crane in Robinson Township.
Allegheny Crane workers brought 179,000 pounds of counterweights to stabilize the crane as it lifted the airplane.
The plane owner was not there Monday but officials said he has insurance. And for this particular crane, Pyros said, 5 percent of all profits are donated to Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh.
“I think they do good work,” Pyros said, noting that he has a nephew God son with special needs.
The airport was closed to air traffic during the hours the crane was set up. Although the crews brought special “swamp mats” to keep the crane from sinking into the ground, Monday's brisk temperatures kept the hillside stable.
Once the crane was stabilized and the plane was secured with Kevlar straps, it took only minutes to raise it to the runway level. There, the plane's nose was secured to a car hauler and it was driven on its own wheels to a hangar.
Jackowski, who was picked in part to do the salvage because he's worked on this plane before and owns a similar plane, said crews will take about a week removing the wings and tail before trucking the body to Rostraver for the repair work.
The crash left the plane's propellers bent, the nose gear smashed and at least one fuel tank destroyed.
Still, “it's salvageable,” Jackowski said, noting that his company only gets calls of this magnitude about once or twice a year.
The regional office of the FAA, which covers most of Western Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia, gets only about a half-dozen calls like this annually, said FAA investigator Dean Glasser, who was at the airport Monday.
Glasser said his physical investigation of this crash ended when the plane was moved. But a report of findings into the cause of the crash could be weeks in coming.
The National Transportation Safety Board did not get involved in this incident because there were no injuries or fatalities, officials said.
In this case, officials agreed, luck played a role. Had the plane skidded in a straight line it likely would have gone end-over-end. If it had gone in a different direction, it could have collided with a traffic tower, a large fence or a public road.
“He's very lucky,” Uptegraff said of the pilot.
