The pilot of a small plane that crashed, killing both on board, mysteriously asked air traffic controllers to cancel his plan to land at a rural airport in north-central Florida so he could fly 200 miles further south along the Gulf coastline – then crashed trying to land at his original airport destination.
The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the crash Sunday afternoon of a small, two-seat Lancair 360 near the Cross City airport in Dixie County, about 50 miles west of Gainesville. The flight was returning from Atmore Municipal Airport in southern Alabama. The NTSB said the purpose of the flight was personal.
One of the two people on board was an experienced flight instructor, Greg Mahler, 75, of Venice, Florida, south of Sarasota. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he was at the controls that day. Authorities declined to identify the other person on board. Mahler died of his injuries Tuesday at a Gainesville hospital, his wife, Marianne, said on Facebook.
An airport employee at Cross City, Taylor Cole, told the Mainstreet Daily News this week that witnesses who observed the crash heard the plane’s engine sputtering. Cole told the newspaper the pilot chose to go to the far side of the runway, made a downward turn and possibly stalled or lost complete power. The plane went down at the end of the runway.
The plane had filed a flight plan from Atmore to land at Cross City on Sunday, but the unidentified pilot asked air-traffic controllers in Tallahassee whether he could change the plan to fly south to Venice along the shoreline, according to a review of radio traffic recordings that afternoon.
“We’re going to plan on canceling our (flight plan) when we get to be about 20 or 30 miles north of Cross City then go … down the shoreline,” the pilot said. “Final destination will be Venice.”
The controller told the pilot to advise his colleagues in Jacksonville about the change in plans.
“Roger, OK, will do, thank you,” the pilot said.
Weather radar showed no serious bad weather along the plane’s flight path.
Two minutes later, the plane’s transponder, which tells the plane’s location and altitude to the air traffic controller, stopped sending information. A Tallahassee controller asked for its approach, or descent to landing, twice. Mahler’s plane didn’t respond. A controller asked the plane to turn left. More silence.
After a few more calls to the plane, Tallahassee’s air traffic controller asked two nearby planes to report whether they saw Mahler’s plane, or anything unusual. About 17 minutes after the plane’s last message, the air traffic controller asked twice for the pilot to contact air-traffic controllers in Jacksonville.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane crashed while trying to land at Cross City’s airport.
Greg Mahler had experience flying, earning both a commercial and flight instructor license. A pilot who had been friends with Greg Mahler for decades said he was incredibly talented as a pilot and was a trustworthy friend.
“He would help anybody,” he said. “[I] can’t even say enough about him, it’s been devastating here.”
Mahler was a volunteer pilot for Angel Flight, a non-profit charity that arranges free air transport for medical emergencies and time-critical non-emergencies related to medical conditions.