Foggy conditions likely played a role in fatal Eastern KY plane crash, report says
The plane crash that killed a doctor in Harlan County occurred after the aircraft he was piloting fell short of the runway and hit a steep rock wall, a preliminary report on the early November crash shows.
David Sanford, a 55-year-old doctor living in Knoxville, Tenn., at the time of the crash, was the plane’s pilot and the accident’s lone fatality. Sanford grew up in Middlesboro and would fly into southeastern Kentucky to see patients.
On the morning of Nov. 3, Sanford flew his Beechcraft A36 Bonanza out of Knoxville Downtown Island Airport at 9:32 a.m., a preliminary investigative report from the National Transportation and Safety Board said.
Just before 10 a.m., Sanford began the first of three attempted approaches into Harlan’s Tucker-Guthrie Memorial Airport. The report, citing airport surveillance video, showed morning fog restricted visibility around the airport to about 175 feet.
A pilot-rated witness at the airport told investigators that he believed he heard Sanford’s plane make two attempts to land on the airport’s runway but could not see the plane due to fog. The witness said the airplane’s first approach seemed to be too high while the second sounded “really low.”
“For both passes the witness reported that the engine noise was a steady piston engine sound, with no noticeable change in power,” the report states. Additionally, at the time of the crash, a notice was in effect that all airport lighting was out of service.
Flight tracking data showed that Sanford made two approaches to the airport but pulled off. On a third attempt, the plane “impacted a ravine and steep rock wall” about 50 feet below and 375 feet prior to the runway threshold at about 10:09 a.m.
“All major portions of the airframe were located, and a post-crash fire consumed a majority of the cockpit, fuselage, and portions of the left wing,” the report shows.
The witness said he never heard the plane again after the second pass and never heard “any sort of boom or the accident airplane’s eventual impact with terrain,” the report shows.
According to Sanford’s obituary, the doctor graduated from Middlesboro High School, Lincoln Memorial University and the University of Kentucky College of Medicine.
After completing an ophthalmology residency at UK Chandler Hospital, Sanford returned to Eastern Kentucky to open his practice serving patients in his hometown, Harlan and throughout the region.