HUNTSVILLE — A Rogers man died Thursday after his airplane crashed shortly after takeoff at the Huntsville Municipal Airport.
Terry Dean Smith died instantly in the crash, which occurred in a cow pasture about a quarter mile east of the runway at 1:10 p.m., said Madison County Sheriff Phillip Morgan. The accident happened the day before Smith’s 37th birthday.
Smith was piloting a factory-built SeaRey airplane, which is capable of landing on water, but had been equipped with a Subaru automobile engine, said Charles B. Coger, head ofthe Huntsville Airport Commission.
Coger, who witnessed the crash, said Smith was apparently having trouble because he banked the plane to the right, and pilots are supposed to bank to the left upon takeoff from the Huntsville airport.
“I just don’t understand why he made that sharp turn around the tower,” Coger said. “He was trying to make it back onto the runway but he was too low and slow. ... When he stalled out, it just fell to the ground.”
Coger said he didn’t know for sure the engine had stalled. He meant the plane didn’t have sufficient speed at the angle of turn to stay in the air.
“I just heard the ba-whoom, like that,” said Johnny Reed, 73, who lives about 100 yards from the crash site off Madison County Road 6553. Reed said he normally hears engines of airplanes that fly by his house, but he didn’t hear the engine of Smith’s aircraft.
“If the engine was going, I would have heard it,” he said. “I just heard a big boom. When I first looked out the door, I didn’t even know it was an airplane. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
“The plane was wobbling around,” said Duane Glenn, 42, of Huntsville. “We saw it hit.”
Witnesses said the plane seemed to lose power, spiral then crash in an upside-down position.
“He started flying when he was 16,” said Maureen Smith of Rogers, Terry Smith’s mother, who arrived at the scene late Thursday afternoon. “It was his life. He loved to fly.”
Maureen Smith said her son never had an accident while piloting an airplane before.
“He was Mr. Safety,” she said, “and always has been.”
“He was real cautious,” Coger said. “Never took a chance on anything.”
Maureen Smith said the family moved from Iowa to Rogers when Terry Smith was 2 years old. Terry Smith was single and had one child, a daughter Haylee, 4, who lives in Las Vegas.
Maureen Smith said Terry Smith worked as an engineer for the heating and air-conditioning system at Cherokee Casino in West Siloam Springs, Okla. He previously worked as a hotel engineer at Embassy Suites in Rogers and at a hotel in Las Vegas.
Coger said installing Subaru engines in SeaRey planes is “a real common conversion.”
The SeaRey is made by Progressive Aerodyne Inc. of Orlando, Fla. The model Smith owned was a two-seater.
Maureen Smith said the airplane was registered in her son’s name. He had purchased it six or eight months ago, she said.
Coger said Terry Smith told an airport employee he wanted to test the propeller. He had taken off and landed once, then took off again when he banked to the right and crashed, Coger said.
Morgan said witnesses indicated the plane was flying very low when it passed over the Madison County Recycling Center, only about 150feet above the ground.
Coger said Terry Smith sometimes kept two airplanes at the Huntsville airport, but the other plane is currently in Florida. He said the airport is popular because it’s uncontrolled.
“There’s no control tower,” Coger said. “We’re more informal.”
Pilots like to practice at the Huntsville airport, he said, because the often strong cross winds at the airport, which is the highest in Arkansas at an elevation of 1,748 feet, present a challenge the pilots won’t face at many other airports in the state. The airport has a 3,600-foot-long, 60-foot-wide runway.
Morgan said the last crash at the Huntsville airport was in 1999, resulting in two deaths.
An investigator from the Federal Aviation Administration drove up from Little Rock, arriving at the crash scene about 7 p.m.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 03/19/2010