Looks like 2 guys bought it in a Bellanca 7ECA (got the type from another article.) Tragic, since it looks like they were just doing touch and goes, but that's probably the time we feel safest (in the pattern) and get complacent. What gets me here is the never-ending ability of the press to get the details wrong...and the confusing nature of the term "stall."

We'll have to wait til the NTSB report but it sounds like an accellerated stall resulting from overbanking, possibly a correction from overshooting the base-to-final turn.

Small plane crash kills two

Flight instructor, student die when single-engine craft goes down at Oakland International Airport.

PUBLISHED: January 28, 2006

By Korie Wilkins
Journal Register News Service

WATERFORD TWP. -- Two Oakland County men described as experienced pilots were killed in a plane crash Friday morning at Oakland County International Airport.

Dead are 51-year-old Eugene Hammond of Waterford Township and Thomas Bailey, 34, of Pontiac. Hammond was the instructor and Bailey was the student, said J. David VanderVeen, director of Central Services for Oakland County.

Bailey was a licensed commercial pilot. VanderVeen said investigators don't know who was at the controls at the time of the crash.

"They were both experienced pilots," he said. "From what I understand, there was no communication between the pilot and the tower that anything was wrong."

The plane crashed on runway 9-left, off of Hatchery Road, at the west end of the airport, said FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory. Authorities said it will likely take months to determine what caused the single-engine, Bellanca plane to crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board is handling the investigation, with help from local authorities and the Federal Aviation Administration, said John Brannen, senior air safety investigator with the NTSB.

He said it appears the two-passenger plane was practicing touch-and-go landings shortly before it crashed. The pilot made a tight turn, which could have resulted in a loss of air speed and an engine stall, authorities said. "Something went wrong at some point," Brannen said.

Dennis Weismiller, 33, of Bay City, was working on a roof at a nearby drug store when he witnessed the crash about 9:30 a.m. He said he saw the plane in the air and then it faltered. He didn't hear an explosion or see any fire.

"It kind of nose-dived into the ground," Weismiller said as he ate lunch at the Pontiac Lake Inn on Sherwin Court. "It looked pretty serious, especially when I saw all the fire trucks. I was surprised it happened right in front of me. It was a shock."

According to authorities, the plane was registered to Sutton Aviation of Lapeer but was based out of Waterford Township. The company gives flying lessons, according to its Web site. Officials from Sutton Aviation did not return calls seeking comment.

The Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office said autopsies will be performed today. Planes continued to land and take off Friday morning after the crash. At the scene, emergency workers could be seen around the black and white aircraft.

VanderVeen said this is the first fatal crash at the airport since 1998. Since then, there have been at least two million takeoffs and landings at the airport, which is on M-59 near Williams Lake Road.

The last crash at the airport was in December 2004 when a two-seater Cessna 152 crashed into a field on the north side of M-59, just west of Crescent Lake Road. A student and an instructor were in that plane and both survived. There was also a crash near the airport in March 2000.

Ted Pilchak, who owns Datsun Doctor on Sherwin Court near the airport, said he remembers that crash. This time, he didn't see the crash but heard the sirens. "At first, I thought it might be a practice drill," Pilchak said.

While he doesn't usually think about having his business so close to the airport, Friday's events hit a little close to home. Pilchak said he's seen pilots do dangerous or hot-shot maneuvers and calls airport authorities. "Generally, I feel pretty safe here," he said. "But this sheds a different light on that. It's a sad thing."

I say "Damn the press" and my best to the families.
We all make mistakes, lets hope we walk away more often than not.
If I go, I hope I don't take others with me and I hope I go doing what I love.
Caber feigh

I say more like WING stall. At least the one on the inside of the turn! Now the engine quitting may have been the factor that lead to the panic that lead to the lack of airspeed and/or potential un-coordinated condition that then finally lead to the uncontrolled contact with the earth.
IF all of the "spectator" accounts are true it sounds like the classic stall/spin after engine failure. Big IF, but I'd put my money there for now. I've been hearing of this one since I could understand english from my parents and since witnesed it and even lived it once. No matter how many friggin' times I hear of this situation it still amazes me. If it quits you HAVE to release some back pressure to keep the wings flying and if you decide to make the turn back to the runway in this emergency situation no where else should you be more focused (along with all the other shit going on) on keeping the ball centered and flight coordinated and smooth. It is always better to start impacting objects under control with the wings level in a more horizontal fashion than to panic and aggrevate the airplane into loss of air separation at the wing leading edge thus impacting the ground nearly vertical with no control what so ever.
We would always have this discussion with new guys in timber. Being that we are over the trees all day every day we knew that if the engine quit we were going into the trees. Most new guys always said they would "stall it into the trees". In our observation of watching two turbine Ag-Cats and one turbine Dromader going into the trees that is wrong. You definetly want to be into the wind if possible and not more than one tenth of one mile per hour over the stall speed. The general opinion was to have firm control (airspeed) until the exact moment the trees impact took control.
My personal experience with spinning around (not IN) after engine failure; Sanford, Florida ,July 1992, Cessna 195 with a 450 h.p. R-985. First test flight right after an engine change with a mechanic in the right. Taking off on 18 at about 3-400 agl the prop rolled back ALL the way. Having a field with only fencing and the sparse palm tree to the right and no runway in front of me I elected to make the turn to the right. As I was doing this I consciously told myself NOT to commit to making the full 180 but to roll out and take the field/fence/probably flip over, like a man if it started to feel sketchy. I released the back pressure not only a little but enough to give me a very comfortable margin of 10-15 over wings-level stall speed. At that point I rolled into a very aggressive 45-60 degree bank all the while ALLOWING the nose to drop through the horizon. The thing I remember the most clearly though is that as soon as I innitiated the turn I actually put all of the outside items in my PERIPHERAL vision and I FOCUSED on the ball until I rolled out. The funny part was that when I rolled out on 36 I was under threat of running off of it and I actually had to make another left 90 to land on 27 left! The second turn was a lot more relaxed I'll say. The mechanic did cover his head and say "don't stall it, don't stall it" when I started the first turn back. By the way the reason it happened was traced back to the mechanic. I had a counterweight prop and the new engine had the hydromatic crankshaft that needed to have the plug screwed into the crankshaft. They didn't do that. Even after an extensive runup to full power etc. it still didn't thin the oil out enough to run back out of the crankshaft. About 20-30 seconds of takeoff power did and those Hamilton Standard props have no low stops, so there we were. Needless to say they got it figured out but he still didn't want to come on the second test flight!
Moral of the story; airspeed is life and keep it coordinated in times of stress.

Fly the biggest piece down, so they say...

My point was just that the media/press gets their terms mixed up sometimes, but also that catastrophic crashes happen inside the pattern and more often than not the urge to pull up kills pilots.

My old flight instructor wrote me an email last night with some bad news:

Fellow was killed in his Lancair homebuilt today about 1.5 miles south of the runway. I ran the distance across all the cow pastures towards the site as soon as I saw the smoke but there was just charred and firey wreckage by the time anyone got there. The CHP copter got there ahead of me and circled a few minutes before landing – I think they could clearly see no one had a chance of surviving. The whole site was only about 20 yards long--- witnesses said he hit in a nose UP attitude with engine revving at high rpm. Some of us were speculating he could have lost a prop, cg went fatally aft and he simply stalled in that attitude the whole way down. He was entering on the 45 at the time.

He also added that the pilot had a glider rating, so if the speculation is true about having lost a prop, that plane must have become pretty much unflyable with an extremely aft CG... kinda disconcerting for those of us who are confident we can deadstick anything in.

On the other end of the spectrum, I read on the 170 website about a midair between a C210 and a C170. The 170 had its engine completely torn from its mounts, and the pilot was able to fly it to the ground with nothing more than a firewall out there in front of him. Talk about aft CG's!! The 210 pilot was not so lucky.