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West Jordan • Investigators are trying to figure out what caused a fixed-wing, single-engine plane to crash moments after take off, killing one man and critically injuring the other in West Jordan on Tuesday afternoon.
Hundreds of bits and pieces of debris from the downed plane lay scattered across a West Jordan soccer field Tuesday afternoon. West Jordan police Sgt. Drew Sanders said the plane had just taken off from the nearby South Valley Regional Airport and was headed south when witnesses said the plane "was struggling to gain altitude and ultimately was unable to make it."
The plane crashed around 1:20 p.m. at the West Jordan Soccer Complex field, near 7900 South and 4340 West, Sanders said.
Police said that one of the two male occupants of the two-seater homemade Pulsar aircraft was taken to University Hospital in Salt Lake City in critical condition by ground ambulance and was undergoing surgery two hours later.
The other man died at the scene.
Jackets, pillows, a twisted pilot's chair and scraps of metal lay scattered for several feet inside a taped-off perimeter as investigators searched for the cause of the accident.
Dan McCullough, who is a pilot and works across the street from the soccer field, saw the fatal crash from beginning to end.
"The plane just went out and parts were all over the place ... the impact was extremely loud," McCullough said.
He said that on takeoff, the pilot tried three times to gain altitude, but never got higher than 50 to 70 feet in the air.
"He didn't gain altitude higher than that telephone pole," McCullough said as he pointed to a nearby utility pole.
McCullough said his first instinct was to try to capture video of the erratically moving plane, so he pulled out his phone, then quickly realized the trouble the aircraft was in and, instead, used his phone to dial 911.
Then the right wing dipped and the plane turned upside-down and crashed.
When he rushed to the area of the wreckage, McCullough saw one man inside of the plane and one outside, both with severe injuries.
McCullough said a worker from the airport who rushed to the scene told McCullough he had asked the pilot over the radio if he was having trouble during the flight and the pilot replied, "No, we are just an underpowered aircraft."
At the time the plane went down, an isolated rainstorm was moving through the area.
"We don't know if weather was a factor or not," Sanders said.
Several city employees who were maintaining the soccer grounds at the time of the crash declined to comment to The Tribune.
West Jordan police, airport police and the Federal Aviation Administration were investigating. Officials said they did not know where the plane was headed at the time.
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