ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 22, 1996 TAG: 9603220089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
A pilot who lost power about 10,000 feet in the air crash-landed safely in the middle of the Valley View Mall parking lot Thursday night.
It was unclear what caused the single-engine Cessna 172 to malfunction. But about 10 miles out from the Roanoke Regional Airport, the plane lost power. Two miles before landing, the engine failed.
The pilot, W. James Lee, tried to glide his plane to the airport, but realized he couldn't make it.
"All you could do is aim for the parking lot," said Lee, who was flying from Hickory, N.C. "No matter how you came, it was scary, just scary. I had to aim away from the parked cars."
Lee, 45, and his passenger, Donna Hauck, both of Marsteller, Pa., were visibly shaken afterward as they looked at the plane, nose down in a grassy island on the west side of the mall parking lot. Neither was injured.
Lee, who has logged 900 hours of flight time, said he was en route to Bedford, Pa., from a business trip.
Just after 7 p.m., he said, he pressed the emergency button, signaling to the tower at Roanoke Regional Airport that he was in trouble. The airport controllers tried to guide him to the runway, but his engine had already quit and he was unable to reach the tarmac.
"I got down to 2,500 feet and I didn't have the glide to make it," he said. "I made a quick turn to the left."
On landing, the plane hit a lamppost, then touched down several times on a nearly empty parking lot several hundred yards from an entrance to Montgomery Ward. There was minor damage to the plane, according to Virginia State Police Trooper J.A. Britton. The nosewheel collapsed, after it hit a curb, he said.
Joe Flamini saw the plane coming. He had just gotten out of his truck to go buy some compact discs.
"I heard a crunch," Flamini said. "He hit the light stand. Then I heard another crunch and he was hitting my car."
Flamini, a field engineer for U.S. Cellular, had gotten on his portable phone to call for help. By the time he looked around, he said, the plane had come to a stop. Lee and Hauck were already outside surveying the damage.
Flamini then looked around his truck. Scattered around the parking lot were the remains of his driver's side mirror.
"Ten seconds later and that could have been me in pieces," he said. "I think there are three incredibly lucky people in the Valley View parking lot. Me and the two people in the plane."
But the accident didn't quell his desire for shopping. There were still compact discs to buy, he said.
Virginia State Police and Roanoke City police and firefighters responded to the scene. Trooper Britton said the left wing of the plane also grazed a nearby tree.
The mall's location, near the airport, has often made it a likely place to crash land.
Bill Smithers, a Montgomery Ward salesman, said he didn't hear the crash from the electronics department.
"We're right at the end of one of the main runways," he said. "A lot of people have asked why this mall was built here at the end of the airport runway ... and it's always been in the back of everyone's mind."
Lee's plane is the fourth to crash at or near Valley View Mall.
Last September, a single-engine Cessna 152 crash-landed in a hayfield in between the mall and the airport. The pilot escaped serious injury.
In 1987, two planes crashed on access roads at the Valley View parking lot. A small plane crash-landed on an access road, clipping some traffic signs, and a rented plane crashed and skidded on another access road. No one was injured in either incident.
The Associated Press contributed information to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. 1. This Cessna 172 crash-landed in theby CNBValley View Mall parking lot Thursday after losing power 10,000 feet
up and 10 miles from Roanoke Regional Airport. 2. Joe Flamini stands
beside his company car that lost its side mirror and a little paint
when the plane sideswiped it. Flamini had just walked away from the
vehicle. "Ten seconds later and that could have been me in pieces,"
he said. 3. The pilot, W. James Lee, and his passenger, Donna Hauck,
stand near the crashed airplane. They walked away from the crash
unhurt. "All you could do is aim for the parking lot," said Lee.
color.