One still in hospital after Friday plane crash

The Manassas Regional Airport has developed a reputation as a bustling regional terminal, with small private planes, and both corporate and commuter jets that frequent the airstrip.

But when a small experimental aircraft crashed near the airport Friday afternoon, city officials were reminded that crashes are not uncommon at their airport.

Friday’s crash happened just before 5 p.m. after two Herndon men had just taken off from the airport.

Once in the air the plane began experiencing problems. The pilot tried to return to the airport but lost altitude and crashed into a nearby wooded area, said Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller.

Both injured men were flown to the hospital, one of them in serious condition.

At least one of them was still in the hospital on Saturday, said Geller.

The plane went down less than a mile from the airport’s south airfield.

Emergency crews surrounded the crash scene – a rural neighborhood off of Lucasville Road in Bristow - but did not allow immediate access to the crash site Friday afternoon because federal investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration had not arrived.

The two men inside the small craft may consider themselves lucky considering some of the crashes that have happened at the airport before.

Bob Halsall, Manassas’ Deputy Coordinator, and a city resident for more than 25-years, remembers a plane crash that killed the pilot while several thousand on the ground – many of them children – watched.

It happened on May 19, 1998 at the DARE air show, an event that was held annually at the Manassas airport and was part of local law enforcement’s drug enforcement education program.

Students from several local schools were at the airport that day to watch the show, said Halsall.

The plane, a propeller driven Sukhoi SU-29, entered a skidding turn in an attempt to awe the crowd.

When it reached the top of the loop, the airplane reversed direction to come out of the turn but drove into the ground, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The pilot was killed instantly.

Witnesses told crash investigators that the plane was “dangerously low” and needed at least 300 more feet to complete the turn, but they didn’t hear any unusual noises coming from the plane’s engines, according to the NTSB.

“When it comes to emergency management the airport is something that we have to keep on our radar at all times. It is so close to our rail system that dissects the city itself,” said Halsall.

The airport is home to mid-sized aviation firms such as Dulles Aviation and Colgan Air, operator of the doomed commuter plane that killed 50 people when it crashed outside of Buffalo, NY in Feb.

A Virginia Railway Express station also sits near the airport, and is the first station on the commuter rail system’s Manassas line.

Since 1984 at least 18 people have been killed in air crashes at or near the airport, according to NTSB records.

Staff writer Uriah A. Kiser can be reached at (703) 878-8065.