When the engine on Jean Dupon’s light plane died on approach to Martha’s Vineyard Airport on Saturday night, he had two things going for him: almost 30 years’ experience as a pilot and the biggest full moon in 20 years.
Mr. Dupon, 67, of Edgartown, did exactly what he should have under the circumstances, said fellow pilot and Martha’s Vineyard Airport manager Sean Flynn. He pointed the plane towards State Beach.
Two Vineyard residents were treated for minor injuries after their plane crash-landed between the bridges on Joseph Sylvia State Beach on Saturday night.
Jean Dupon, 67, and Susan King, 45, both of Edgartown, were treated and released from Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, state police trooper David Parent confirmed.
The single-engine Piper aircraft was pointed out to sea, propeller blades slightly bent, no undercarriage evident, with obvious damage under the fuselage but otherwise remarkably intact on state beach on Sunday.
The long investigation into the cause of the September 2008 plane crash which took the life of Cape Air pilot and Vineyard Haven resident David D. Willey is over, its findings summarized in two words: “spatial disorientation.”
A Cape Air flight bound from Boston to the Vineyard on Saturday evening was forced to make an emergency landing at the Barnstable Municipal Airport when the landing gear malfunctioned.
None of the seven people on board the twin-engine Cessna 402 were injured.
The pilot, John Call, 32, of Marshfield, was on approach to the Vineyard airport around 7:15 p.m. when a warning light indicated the landing gear in the nose was malfunctioning, Martha’s Vineyard Airport manager Sean Flynn said.
A single-engine Cessna headed towards the Vineyard from New Hampshire crash-landed in a cranberry bog near Buzzards Bay on Sunday after the plane experienced engine problems and the pilot attempted an emergency landing. Although the plane was seriously damaged, all four people on board escaped without serious injuries.
A detailed preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board draws no conclusions on what caused the Cape Air crash which killed pilot Capt. David Willey, a resident of Vineyard Haven, on Sept. 26.
But the full report, according to Luke Schiada, chief investigator of the crash for the NTSB which has involved local, state and federal authorities, may take six to eight months to complete.
“It is important to note we are still in the information gathering stage. There is a lot of data we are still waiting to get,” he said.
