Northwoods airport no stranger to fatal crashes
The president of the Illinois Aviation Academy whose instructor was killed after crashing a plane in the Northwoods of Wisconsin Thursday said the flight was a dangerous one even for an experienced pilot.
Kevin McCabe, 26, of LaGrange, and his uncle Pierce McCabe, 68, of Hinsdale, were killed when a rented twin-engine plane piloted by Kevin McCabe crashed on route to the Lakeland Airport in Arbor Vitae, Wis., after taking off from the Aurora Municipal Airport.
Robert Werderich, president of the Illinois Aviation Academy in West Chicago, said Lakeland Airport is very difficult to land at and the weather conditions on the night of the crash would have made it even more challenging.
"It's in the woods, literally in the Northwoods, an airport carved in the trees," Werderich said. "It's not like you have a lot of room for big, expansive runways."
The accident is the third fatal airplane crash in the Lakeland Airport area since 2003, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Werderich said McCabe was aspiring to be a professional pilot and came to the flight school in the spring of 2009 to study to become an instructor. The company hired him in July 2009.
"He was literally willing to scrub the floors and airplanes - anything to get his foot in the door to get a flight instructor job," Werderich said. "He had a great heart and a great attitude."
McCabe was trained as a single-engine instructor and had taught about 30 students how to fly, but the plane he had rented to fly to the Minocqua area for vacation was a multi-engine aircraft, Werderich said.
Werderich said McCabe did not have much experience with the type of plane he was flying and that none of his fellow instructors at the school knew that he was planning the trip.
"It's a challenging environment for the best of pilots," Werderich said. "The weather when he made the flight was questionable. If we would have known we would have talked him out of it."
The area experienced heavy rain, fog and strong winds on the night of the crash, according to the National Weather Service.
The aircraft was reported missing about 8:30 p.m., and search crews searched throughout the night before finding the plane late Friday morning. The plane was discovered about five miles north of the Lakeland/Lee Field Airport in the Trout River near Minocqua, said Federal Aviation spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory.
"As friends we would like to know what happened, but as professionals we want to hear what the (National Transportation Safety Board) will find," Werderich said.
Attempts to reach Kevin McCabe's family were unsuccessful.
Pierce McCabe served as Brookfield's village president from 1980 to 1989 and worked as a principal at Columbus East elementary school in Cicero.
It will be a year or more before results of the investigation are available, officials from the FAA said.
In 2003 four suburban residents were killed in a crash while taking off at the Lakeland Airport.
The twin-engine plane was piloted by a veteran American Airlines pilot from Naperville, but an engine failure during takeoff sent the plane into the trees, according to the NTSB. A husband and wife from St. Charles and a second Naperville man also died in the crash.