Prineville Airport plane crash victim identified
Prineville police on Tuesday identified a 73-year-old Bend pilot killed when his small plane crashed on takeoff Sunday afternoon from Prineville Airport.
Bruce J. Myers died when his single-engine RV-9A plane crashed while taking off from the airport shortly after 2 p.m. Sunday, said Police Chief Les Stiles.
Federal Aviation Administration records show Myers was the owner of the amateur-built experimental-class plane, from from Van’s Aircraft, based in Aurora, Oregon. The single-engine plane was manufactured ad received its airworthiness certificate in Jan. 2007.
FAA rules state that so-called “kit planes” must be at least 51 percent assembled by the owner.
FAA spokesman Ian Gregor quoted local authorities as reporting that only the pilot was on board.
Airport Assistant Manager Brian Way confirmed the fatality and said both runways were closed while an investigation got underway.
Airport Manager Kelly Coffelt said the runways reopened around 5 p.m. Sunday but that a taxiway where the plane came to rest, parallel to one runway, remained closed.
Coffelt said FAA and National Transportation Safety Board investigators were due on scene Monday morning. He said he knew the pilot and that officials’ first priority was to contact the family.
The crash was reported near the end of a runway and brought first responders rushing to the airport, located on the hill west of Highway 126 and about three miles southwest of downtown Prineville.
Witnesses told NewsChannel 21 firefighters put out a fire sparked by the crash near the end of the runway. Unconfirmed reports indicated a Life Flight helicopter was put on stand-by but canceled.
It was not raining at the airport at the time of the crash but began a short time afterward, Coffelt said, adding, “It’s my impression it was not weather-related.”
An RV9 is a kit (experimental classification, amateur-built) plane
There also was a fatal crash near the Prineville Airport on Sept. 8, 2013, when pilot Murray Crowe, 47, of Terrebonne was killed in the crash of his experimental-category Challenger II light sport aircraft northeast of the airport.
Coffelt said Sunday he believed that was the first such deadly crash in the airport’s vicinity in its history.
