A flight instructor and her student had been practicing landings minutes before their plane collided in the air with another plane, a West Georgia Regional Airport employee said Thursday.
“We heard her come in,” Randy Williams, the airport’s fixed base operator, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Williams, who has been flying planes since he was a teenager, knew Taylor Stone and was impressed with the young pilot's energetic personality and smarts. Williams didn't see or hear the crash shortly before 11 a.m. Wednesday, but another employee told him there was a plane down. The two quickly found the wreckage of two planes in a mangled mess on the ground. Both pilots and a passenger were killed.
“My guess is one of the pilots didn’t hear the other one and didn’t see the other one,” Williams said. “It was instantaneous.”
Stone, a 24-year-old flight instructor, was flying a Diamond DA20 and had a student aboard, according to investigators. The name of her passenger was not released Thursday pending notification of family members. The other pilot, William Lewis Lindsey, 79, was piloting his 1978 Beechcraft Bonanza alone at the time of the crash.
Lindsey’s family declined to comment on his death when contacted by phone Thursday afternoon.
Stone’s friends remembered her for her stubborn determination to achieve her dreams. As a young girl, she was determined to become a pilot.
“She accomplished a lot in 24 years that some people try 40 or 50 years to do,” Patrick Hickey said Thursday. “She was achieving stuff — things you never thought she’d be doing.”
Hickey, whose wife and Stone were high school classmates at Chattanooga Christian, set up a Go Fund Me fundraising page to assist her family. Some donors left words of condolence on the page in Stone's honor.
“Taylor you were an amazing woman and a good pilot,” one person wrote. “I am blessed to have had the chance to help teach you to fly and you’ll be sorely missed.”
Alpha Eto Rho, a college aviation fraternity, posted a tribute to Stone on its Facebook page, along with a picture of her beside a plane.
“Taylor Stone wasn’t just a professional, but a passionate aviator who brought hope and positivity to all those she knew,” the national organization posted.
Stone hoped to get enough flying hours under her belt to one day fly for a commercial airline. She inspired those around her, and those closest to her had no doubt she would reach her goal.
“She ended up dying doing what she loved,” Hickey said. “She was living her dream and she died doing it. It sucks, but there is happiness in that, too.”
Flights continued Thursday at the airport as investigators hauled away the wreckage from the crash. Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.
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