LOCAL

Officials release names of 2 killed in Buncombe County plane crash

Dillon Davis
The Citizen-Times

ASHEVILLE — Two Henderson County residents were killed in a single-engine plane crash this week in a cornfield off Lower Brush Creek Road near Fairview. 

North Carolina Highway Patrol troopers say 76-year-old Malachy Dady Beckham Jr., of Fletcher, and 72-year-old John Thomas Gaitskill, of Hendersonville, were killed in the crash that occurred at approximately 10:42 a.m. June 26. The plane, a Rans S-6 Coyote II light sport aircraft, was located about a mile northeast of Six Oaks Airport off Lower Brush Creek Road in Fairview.

Both Beckham Jr. and Gaitskill are listed as licensed commercial pilots and certified flight instructors, Federal Aviation Administration records show.

The primary investigating agency for the incident is the National Transportation Safety Board. Officials initially did not identify the two crash victims but noted there were just two people aboard the aircraft.

Adam Gerhardt, an air safety investigator with the NTSB, told members of the news media June 27 the purpose of its investigation is to determine what happened to the aircraft and why. Gerhardt said the flight was local, departing from Six Oaks, and it is believed to have been returning there at a later time. 

The airplane was "destroyed" as a result of the crash, he said.  Parts of the heavily damaged aircraft were being collected from a field off Lower Brush Creek Road and loaded onto a truck to haul away at about 3 p.m.

One witness told investigators they saw the plane descend from the sky into the terrain.

"That will be part of our process of looking at exactly how it came down," Gerhardt said.

The aircraft is scheduled to be held locally overnight and is expected to be transported June 28 to a facility in Springfield, Tennessee, for further investigation by authorities. A preliminary report is expected to be released by the agency within the next 10 days.

Per FAA records, the aircraft is listed as a fixed wing, single-engine plane that was manufactured in 2007 by Peter Fontaine. It is registered to PF Flyers Inc., which directs to an address in Asheville. Its certification was issued in May 2014 and did not expire until May 2020. 

Justin Aiken, manager of the small, privately held Cane Creek Airport, not far from the crash location, said he and Beckham previously worked together in different capacities at Asheville Regional Airport. He called Beckham "a good pilot," describing him as "a big, tall guy who always had a smile on his face."

"You go to airshows and you see old military aircrafts that fly around? He used to fly those," Aiken said. "He was a very experienced pilot. I don’t know what went wrong."

Six Oaks is registered to Fontaine and Fletcher resident Matthew Burril. Attempts to reach both men have been unsuccessful.

Chris Ferraraccio, owner of AMF Aviation, prepares to haul away a single-engine plane June 27, 2019. The plane crashed the day before, killing the two passengers onboard.

Much of Lower Brush Creek Road near the Upper Brush Creek intersection was closed to traffic well into the afternoon June 26 as investigators were on the scene attempting to determine the probable cause of the crash. 

Neighbor David Stepp didn't see it come down. But that didn't keep his 2-year-old daughter from alerting him to its presence once it did, barely a stone's throw from his front deck.

She called out to him, "Daddy, daddy," he said, and he soon saw what was left of the wreckage.

"It's kind of scary, you know?" Stepp said. "Another hundred feet and when a plane falls, it's not going to drop straight down. You never know. I don't know if he was trying to land or if was having problems."