Tree Strike Kills 1
Pictured: A Piper PA-28-180 Cherokee in Arkansas
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Jason W. Hamm
What: Oak Ridge Flyers Inc. Piper PA-28-180 Cherokee B
Where: Oliver Springs Airport in Anderson County, TN
When: 18-OCT-2009
Who: 4 on board, 1 fatality
Why: After a hard landing, the plane struck a tree.
The pilot was Doyle R. Chadwick.
The passengers, all of whom survived, were Phillip Byrge, 49, and his 12-year-old son Nathan and 8-year-old daughter Mary.
President of the Oliver Springs Airport board of directors,Steve Hamel, was quoted as saying that he believes “Wind and a wet runway likely played a role in the crash….It’s a grass runway, and it looks like the skid marks of extended distance here, that the brakes may have been locked up on the airplane”