Two days before he was killed in a crash near the Cherokee County airport, a Woodstock man told a flight instructor he was a little “rusty” with the aircraft, according to a new report.
Steven Silver, 69, had a private pilot license, and his instructor in Oklahoma acknowledged Silver was “knowledgeable of the operation” of an airplane, the National Transportation Safety Board said in the preliminary report.
However, Silver told the instructor he had not flown a Cessna 421 since 1984, according to the report.
Despite that, he flew out of Tulsa, Okla., at 7:30 p.m. March 3 in the Cessna 421B he purchased there a day earlier, the NTSB said. No flight plan was filed.
“Preliminary radar data obtained from the Federal Aviation Administration revealed that the pilot was in contact with air traffic control” while en route to the Cherokee airport, the NTSB said. According to the report, Silver ended communication “when he had the airport in sight.”
Witnesses saw the plane flying “extremely low” before seeing a “ball of fire” erupt near the airport about 12:23 a.m. March 4, the NTSB said.
Airport video surveillance showed the plane “banked to the right side of the runway” before coming down into a ravine, the airport manager told the NTSB.
The plane came to rest in a retention pond near the runway, officials said shortly after the crash.
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