Antique plane pilot, wife died flying in bad weather

BY BORYS KRAWCZENIUK
Times-Shamrock Writer

The pilot of an antique airplane who died with his wife when the plane crashed on Labor Day last year near their private Lenox Twp. landing strip ignored bad-weather warnings and tried to land in a thunderstorm, the National Transportation Safety Board has concluded.

Thomas Y. Huf, 73, an experienced pilot who lived near the strip with his wife, Elaine, 65, told a friend he had developed a way of landing using a global positioning satellite “in case the weather got bad,” the friend told an NTSB crash investigator.

Mr. Huf’s 1944 Cessna T-50 Bobcat twin-propeller struck a treetop 45 feet above the ground, then, 185 feet later, a second tree 10 feet lower before hitting the terrain and bursting into flames that consumed the plane another 175 feet past the second tree.

The 8:30 p.m. crash happened about two miles southeast of the Hufs’ home.

The NTSB blamed the crash directly on Mr. Huf, saying he never got updated weather information and intentionally flew into thunderstorms that obscured visibility and led him to crash into the trees.

Mr. Huf and his wife were on the final leg of a flight that started in Blakesburg, Iowa, where they attended the Labor Day weekend annual convention of the Antique Airplane Association.

About 5 p.m., a flight service company briefed Mr. Huf, warning him of a storm watch for the skies across Pennsylvania and specifically near his home.

The briefing agent cautioned Mr. Huf against flying using “visual flight rules” — relying on being able to see surroundings to fly — because of the weather. As it turned out, 15 minutes after the crash, a medical helicopter responding to a traffic accident not far from the plane crash was grounded because of “the electrical storm,” the report says.

“Roger, understand, we’ll look at the weather radar, thank you much,” Mr. Huf replied. If he understood, he didn’t pay attention.

One witness told an investigator he saw the plane fly out of his sight, then return flying west “right on top of the trees.”

“The airplane then flew off in the direction of an ‘enormous black cloud with lightning flashing out of it’ and eventually out of his view,” the NTSB report says.

Other witnesses said they heard the plane flying “low” and “really loud.”

“One witness went outside her home and said the sound of the airplane suddenly stopped,” the report says.
“She saw a flash in the vicinity of the crash site, but couldn’t determine if it was lightning or a fire.”
No search began for three days. Six days after the crash, state police found the wreckage.