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Reported by Will
Carr
A pilot is dead
after crashing his plane in North Georgia. Fifty-two year old
Charlie Lainge was flying to Florida when he had engine trouble and
apparently tried to make an emergency landing in Dalton.
Witnesses say the
plane crash sounded like two cars slamming into each other.
The Lancair Prop
Jet crashed into the Highway 52 median around twelve thirty this afternoon.
Witnesses say the plan was flying extremely low and looked to be nearly out
of control.
"It appeared
that he was trying to land, I guess you know, on the road, it probably
couldn't make the Dalton airport," Richard Curtis with the
FAA says. Lainge was flying from Dekalb, Illinois to Brooksville, Florida on
business. He was close to Chattanooga when things went wrong.
"[He] radioed
to the Chattanooga airport and they vectored him to Dalton
airport and he didn't make the airport," Curtis says.
Instead Lainge's
plane nose-dived into the grassy median. Witness say there weren't any flames
but they could smell fuel everywhere.
Investigators
believe engine problems caused the plane to crash. And officials say the
plane doesn't have a black box but does have new technology that should help
with the investigation.
"It has
systems that we should be able to interrogate and send them to a lab and get
some information, good information, out of," Curtis says.
FAA officials say
the next step is for Atlanta Salvage to clean the scene up. The remaining
pieces of the plane will be analyzed to determine if engine failure is the
cause of the crash.
Click here to contact Will
Carr
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