Smells to me like suicide, hormones of a 15 y.o. running amuck.

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/06/plane_crash.htm

Student pilot crashes small plane into building in Tampa

By Vickie Chachere, Associated Press, 01/06/02

A single engine airplane crashed into the Bank of America building in Tampa. (AP Photo)

TAMPA, Fla. -- Workers on Sunday pulled in the crumpled remains of a small airplane that had been dangling from a skyscraper after a 15-year-old student pilot crashed. Officials said the boy was flying without permission and had been pursued by a Coast Guard helicopter and two military jets.

Tampa Police said Charles J. Bishop of Palm Harbor was killed in the Saturday evening crash.

The crash occurred after Bishop's grandmother took him to the National Aviation Academy flight school for a 5 p.m. flying lesson, said Marianne Pasha, a Pinellas County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman.

She said an instructor told Bishop to check equipment on the four-seat 2000 Cessna 172R before the lesson.

"The next thing the instructor knew he was gone," Pasha said.

Though terrorism was quickly discounted, the televised image of a plane blasting a hole in the side of a skyscraper was a chilling reminder of the World Trade Center attacks. The plane's tail dangled near the 28th floor of the 42-story Bank of America building.

Only a few office workers and the staff of a club in the building were present at the time of the crash. None was injured.

Michael Cronin, an attorney for the National Aviation Academy, said Bishop had been taking lessons since March 2001 and had logged about six hours of flight time.

He said the boy often bartered to clean planes in exchange for flight time and was very familiar with operations at the school. Cronin said students do preflight equipment checks on their own, then have their accuracy verified by an instructor. Bishop was a year shy of being able to fly alone and two years too young to earn a pilot's license.

"The bottom line is he essentially stole the aircraft," Cronin said. "We aren't going to speculate what his mental state or motivations were."

A Coast Guard helicopter on routine patrol intercepted the plane and attempted to give the pilot visual signals to land at a small airport, but the pilot did not respond, Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Charlotte Pittman said. Two F-15 fighter jets were also scrambled from Homestead Air Reserve Base as a precaution, said Capt. Kirstin Reimann at the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Sheriff's Sgt. Greg Tita said the FBI was interviewing Bishop's family and that there was no record of the ninth grader running into problems with the law in the past.

Derek Perryman, a classmate of Bishop's at East Lake High School in Palm Harbor, about 25 miles west of Tampa, said Bishop often talked about planes with a friend in their journalism class.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist, he said, Bishop read a paper to the class. "It was real expressive about how he felt, how disappointed he was," Perryman said.

Neighbors said Bishop kept to himself.

"He rode my bus to school. He sat in the front row. He always had sunglasses on for some reason," said David Ontiveros, a 14-year-old neighbor in the apartment complex where Bishop lived with his mother. "He never talked to anybody."

The 28th floor houses the law firm of Shumaker, Loop and Kendrick. Managing partner Greg Yadley said one attorney and her husband were in the offices at the time of the crash, but were not injured. An hour before, he said, an attorney had been at a desk the plane smashed into.

"It could have been possibly a tragic situation," Yadley said. "We were lucky."

Attorney Roger Rovell was working on the 41st floor Saturday when the plane crashed.

"I heard a loud bang," said Rovell. "It wasn't particularly loud. It sounded like an electrical transformer blowing."

In Portland, Ore., where President Bush was touring a job center, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said "there is no indication" of terrorism.

He said Bush was briefed on the incident and that White House officials had been in touch with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and the Federal Aviation Administration. Two other small planes had crashed Saturday, one on a Colorado hillside near Boulder, and another in a vacant field near Los Angeles.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

Answers

>Smells to me like suicide, hormones of a 15 y.o. running amuck.

Or the carelessness of a 15 y.o. thinking he's a Top Gun.

Maybe this is just the Bowling Green (OH) hanger at the flying school, but I seem to remember something about minors not even being allowed to stand near the grounded planes, unless accompanied by their parents or a hanger employee. If that's a wide-spread rule, maybe it needs to be enforced a little more.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

"It could have been possibly a tragic situation," Yadley said. "We were lucky."

Tragic it was. The boy died, butthead.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

Anybody wondering what would have happened if it had been a Monday and that was a bigger plane with a full load of fuel? How come it wasn't shot down?

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002

Tampa and Homestead are not all that close. As I heard it, while the jets were heading to intercept, the kid crashed.

I wonder what the building looked like? All glass, perhaps? Mirrored?

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002