The small Cessna that crashed last month while trying to land at Bangor International Airport came close to slamming into an FAA employee near the impact, according to a government analysis.
The preliminary report on the Aug. 22 crash quotes the unnamed FAA employee as saying he was driving south along the airport’s perimeter road, west of the runway, when he saw the plane dipping towards the ground – and he reflexively ducked thinking it was going to hit him.
“While the plane was landing, I noticed his left wing getting very close to the pavement. He seemed to have tried to correct himself, however there was a crosswind blowing East,” the FAA employee recounted.
That witness said the plane then “veered left toward the Precision Approach Path Indicator (PAPI) lights and struck one of the lights.”
The aircraft then “picked back up into the air” and flew “sideways in an arcing motion” directly toward him, the accident report says.
“The witness ducked down and heard the airplane hit the airport perimeter fence. When he looked up, he saw the airplane impact the ground and cartwheel.”
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The crash killed the Italian pilot, Luigi Accusani, 74, who was ferrying the single-engine Cessna A185F from Europe to the U.S.
Accusani had departed Newfoundland headed for Bangor on the second-to-last leg of his long trip. The final destination was to be Rutland, Vermont.
The preliminary crash report doesn’t speculate on an exact cause.
But some commenters on Facebook suggest the pilot, whose long transatlantic journey had begun in France, was simply tired and unable to regain control of the plane once crosswinds grabbed it.
Carlos Vega, a veteran flight instructor, said he thinks the pilot went into a “panic pull” and didn’t know how to get out of it.
In a case such as that, Vega said the pilot should “cut the flaps.”
But another pilot, Bryan Austin of the North Carolina Forest Service, disagreed, saying that “bending forward to dump the flaps doesn’t seem like a very wise thing to do with a strong crosswind.”
Accusani held an FAA foreign-based private pilot certificate for single-engine planes, according to the crash report.
His last FAA medical certificate was issued on May 31, 2024. At that time, he reported a total of 2,200 flight hours.
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Although the crash only involved a small plane that resulted in a single fatality, it made big news across the internet after Jaxon Cook, a 9-year-old Vassalboro boy, posted video that he had shot of the plane landing – and then crashing – while visiting the airport with his mother.
