Crystal Lake crash report says owner piloted plane
The preliminary report on a small plane crash in Crystal Lake that killed two suburban men last week said the plane was being piloted by the plane's registered owner, Paul Sanfilippo of Round Lake Park, during an instructional flight.
The crash also killed certified flight instructor Hugh Scott Clark, 65, of Lake Forest. Sanfilippo, 82, was a commercially certified pilot, according to the report from the National Transportation Safety Board.
The Beech 35 Bonanza went down about 3:15 p.m. May 3 in a quarry east from the Lake in the Hills Airport, just southwest of the intersection of Rakow and Virginia roads in Crystal Lake. The flight originated from the Lake in the Hills Airport and was operating without a flight plan, the NTSB report says.
Witnesses reported seeing the airplane low to the ground, in a very steep bank, and one stated that the airplane continued to descend at a steep angle before it hit the quarry, the report says. Witnesses told investigators the plane may have been attempting to return to the airport when it began to decelerate just before impact.
The final report on the crash will be ready in up to 12 to 18 months, said NTSB public information officer Keith Holloway said. The NTSB has only four or five investigators in the central region, which includes Illinois and about a dozen other states as far away as New Mexico, Holloway said.
"It's a lot of work," he said. "They take long because we look at everything and we don't just jump to conclusions. We look at each piece and go through it with a fine tooth comb."