Small-plane crash kills two

Jen Lawson and Ed Koch

Friday, April 4, 2003 | 11:03 a.m.

A flight instructor and a student pilot were killed this morning when their small plane crashed and burned in a flight practice area in northwest Las Vegas, nine miles from the North Las Vegas Airport, authorities said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Donn Walker said it is unknown who was flying the single-engine Cessna 172 that went down at 7:50 a.m. in a detention basin about three miles northwest of Centennial High School.

The flight originated today from North Las Vegas Airport, Walker said. He did not know the time of takeoff.

Metro Police Sgt. Clint Bassett, search and rescue team coordinator, said the first call from several witnesses, including some from Centennial High School, came in at 7:53 a.m.

They reported a small plane going down in the Kyle Canyon detention basin. When search and rescue officers and Las Vegas Fire Department firefighters got there, they found the plane engulfed in flames.

When asked about a possible cause, Bassett said: "We can speculate that they lost power or there is a possibility of mechanical failure."

As for radio communications with the airport, Bassett said there were none, noting, "They were probably too busy to think about that."

Fire department spokesman Tim Szymanski said the plane was in an area that was difficult to get to. One unit was able to get there along a power line road and put out the blaze, but not before the plane was consumed.

The FAA is on the scene investigating. The National Transportation Safety Board was expected to arrive at 3 this afternoon.

Brock Lorber, an instructor for the Las Vegas Flying Club, said this morning the plane appeared to be one affiliated with the club, which is based out of the North Las Vegas Airport.

"We're trying to sort everything out," he said. "We don't have any definitives."

The coroner was expected to arrive at the scene and take charge of removing the bodies sometime today.

The plane appeared to have come over the detention wall, flying low, witnesses said.

The crash initially went pretty much unnoticed in the area until a plume of smoke filled the skies, people in the area said.

"I didn't hear it go down, but there was construction on the beltway" that would have drowned out any noise, said Gary Velasquez, principal at Centennial High School.

Today's crash was the second involving a small plane in the northwest valley in a week. Sunday night a Beechcraft Bonanza slammed into a drainage ditch next to the Rancho Mesa apartments at 2991 N. Rancho Drive. The only person aboard that plane, pilot Joseph Randall Edwards, survived.

The NTSB's preliminary report about Sunday night's crash notes that the plane "made a forced landing and collided with obstacles following a loss of engine power during departure from the North Las Vegas airport."

"The flight was operated by the pilot/owner (who) was seriously injured, and the airplane was destroyed. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed and no flight plan had been filed. Witnesses at the scene reported that the airplane engine quit and the airplane struck a road and retaining wall before cartwheeling into a ditch."

The two deaths today bring the number of people killed in plane crashes in Las Vegas or North Las Vegas since Jan. 1, 1999, to 10. There have been 41 crashes of aircraft in those cities since that date, according to the NTSB.

However, that number does not include flights that took off from Las Vegas and North Las Vegas and crashed elsewhere.

Here are the other fatal aircraft accidents in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, according to reports posted on the NTSB website: