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NTSB issues early report on Rostraver deadly plane crash

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National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on the April plane crash at Rostraver Airport that claimed the life of a Jefferson Hills man.

John Graham III, 42, president and CEO of Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, died in the accident. He was the sole occupant of the single-engine plane who, according to Gabe Monzo, executive director of the airport, was practicing touch-and-go maneuvers on a runway when his aircraft veered to the left and went over an embankment. It came to rest in a wooded area and caught fire. Graham was unable to escape.

According to the NTSB report, the plane originated at Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin and “no air traffic services were requested” during the flight between the two airports. Witnesses at Rostraver Airport, according to the safety board, said the pilot was trying to land on “a 4,002-foot-long, 75-foot-wide, asphalt runway” and the plane initially touched down left of the center line, “became airborne and the engine noise increased. The airplane subsequently yawed and banked left, perpendicular to the runway, and the nose pitched up.”

The plane, according to the NTSB, “appeared to stall and roll inverted” before going into a ravine.

The board said another witness, who had recently landed an aircraft, watched from the airport restaurant and recounted dealing with a wind gust during his landing, “which lifted his airplane’s right wing and caused it to drift left.”

The log books in the plane Graham was piloting, the board said, are presumed to have been destroyed in the fire.

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