A single-engine airplane took a nose dive into a hayfield on Tuesday in Hood County, Texas, killing a flight instructor and two Indians, according to reports.
The crash of the 1964 Beechcraft Bonanza C33 was reported at 0930 hrs, according to Trooper Dub Gillum, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Twenty-six year old Casey Brinegar and 22-year old Kartik Kalaichelvan, both flight instructors, and Kartik's brother Pratik Kalaichelyan, 19, died in the accident. Brinegar and Kartik died on the spot while Pratik died in the hospital. Officials have not determined yet, who piloted the plane.
The brothers hailed from Bangalore, they flew on Tuesday night in Brinegar's single-engine plane for dinner at Stephenville's popular Hard-Eight BBQ. The flight instructors wanted to show Pratik, Texas from the sky. But shortly after they began their flight home, the accident occurred.
Brinegar and Kartik were instructors at Skymates flight school in Arlington, according to friends.
Pratik, who was studying dentistry in India, was taken by helicopter to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth where he later died, Gillum said.
On Wednesday, students gathered at Skymates at Arlington Municipal Airport to remember the two pilots. Brinegar and Kartik shared a two-story house near the airport.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation. A witness told investigators that the engine sounded rough and then the four-seat airplane nose-dived, Lynn Lunsford, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration told the Star-Telegram.
The aircraft is registered to Brinegar's father, Marlon Kerry Brinegar, who lives in Arkansas. Friends and students described the plane as having only one control column and said either man could have landed the plane safely had it been possible.
The plane was returning to Arlington Airport when a witness heard the engine cutting out near the Hood County town of Tolar.
Kyle Fortenberry saw and heard the plane above his hay field. 'I seen him circle overhead. Heard his engine stalling, watched him circle back around and nose-dive into the pasture.' The right wing of the 1964 Beechcraft Bonanza hit the ground, and the single-engine plane tumbled, according to an NTSB investigator.
'The young pilot was looking for a place to land, I assume. He did a fabulous job not crashing into a house,' according to Gillum. He thinks the pilot might have landed it if he had had just a bit more daylight. Friends said Kartik learned to fly from Brinegar, and was accumulating flight time before returning to India to be a commercial pilot like his dad, Alangiam P Kalaichelvan, a pilot for King Fisher Airlines.
"Kartik and Pratik's parents are enroute to Dallas and are expected to reach there on Friday morning. Kartik's friends and a team of volunteers are making arrangements to get all the needed documents and transfer the bodies to a local funeral home. The parents want to take the bodies of their sons to Bangalore, so we are making the necessary arrangements. We express our deepest condolences to the family on the loss of two young men," Prasad Thotakura, general secretary of the Indian American Friendship Council, who is helping the family, said.
Image: The site of the plane crash at Hood County, Texas. (Inset) Kartik and Pratik Kalaichelvan.
