COLUMBIA, S.C. — The pilot of a small plane killed earlier this month in a crash near a South Carolina airport told air traffic controllers he missed the runway in foggy weather just before he crashed, federal investigators said.
Farhad Rostampour had just turned his plane away from the attempted landing when his wing hit a home about a half-mile from the Jim Hamilton–L.B. Owens Airport in Columbia, according to the preliminary report released Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Rostampour died in the crash as his plane broke apart and caught fire on Jan. 13, authorities said.
Rostampour took off from the Greenville Downtown Airport in his Beechcraft BE-33 about 30 minutes before the crash, according to the report.
Fog lowered visibility around the airport to a quarter-mile at the time of the crash, according to National Weather Service data.
Witnesses said the plane’s engines sounded normal just before it crashed, the report said.
Preliminary reports from the NTSB include facts about a crash, but not a determination of why a plane went down.
A woman inside the home apparently escaped injury from the crash, although Columbia Fire Chief Aubrey Jenkins the woman may have been scratched by her cats as she tried to get them to safety.
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The plane hit nearby trees, then struck the roof of the home before slamming into the ground, Jenkins said. The impact left a large hole in the home’s roof, and firefighters were able to control the blaze within minutes, the department said.
Jenkins said he did not know if the plane was on fire before the crash.
The woman had just remodeled her home and was worried about making sure her three cats had a safe place to stay, Amy Koon said.
The neighborhood hears plenty of planes fly over, she said.
“I’m outside a lot, you’ll hear planes and they sound like they’re starting to sputter, and you’re thinking, ‘oh God,’” said Koon, a lifelong resident of the area. “But I just, even back to my childhood, I don’t ever remember planes going down here.”
The plane involved was a single-engine Beechcraft BE-33, according to Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration. As is standard, Bergen said the National Transportation Safety Board would be in charge of the investigation and would determine the probable cause of the crash.
According to FlightAware, a five-seat, 1973 Beechcraft BE-33 took off from an airport in downtown Greenville earlier Wednesday and had been slated to arrive at Owens Field at 10:43 a.m.
FAA records show that, since 2006, the plane has been registered to Enviro-Tec Air LLC out of Wilmington, Delaware.
According to NTSB records, the plane was involved in an incident in 2009, when one of the wings was damaged when the pilot failed to properly lower the landing gear at an airport in Rock Hill following a flight from Greenville.
Fog lowered visibility around the airport to a quarter-mile (400 meters) at the time of the crash, according to National Weather Service data.
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