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Plane Hits Building, Crash-Lands Father, Son Escape With Minor Injuries When Craft Goes Down Near Palwaukee

Posted on: Monday, 8 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

A father and son who were aboard a twin-engine Cessna escaped with only minor injuries Friday afternoon after the plane clipped a building and crashed near Palwaukee Airport in Wheeling.

Nathan Mortkovitch, 51, of Skokie and his son were alone in the plane, according to an Illinois State Police representative who would not confirm who was piloting the aircraft.

"He was lucky it clipped the building," said Robert Mark, community relations consultant at Palwaukee. The plane came within feet of crashing into the wall of an adjacent building.

Mortkovitch could not be reached for comment.

Jim Silliman, an air safety investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board, said the passengers reported a malfunction, but it was too early to tell if a faulty left engine was the cause, which airport officials believed failed after takeoff.

NTSB investigators will conduct an investigation next week to determine what led to the emergency landing.

Wheeling Fire Chief Keith MacIsaac said the passengers were treated at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where they signed themselves out hours later.

Witnesses in the Wheeling industrial park where the plane crashed said they ran to the scene in time to see the two crawl out of the Cessna.

The son stumbled out of the plane and "fell to the ground in disbelief" that they had survived, said Ernie Melgar, who works at Nedco Electronics, 505 Chaddick Drive, where the plane clipped the roof of the building.

Melgar said he spoke briefly with the father, who was incoherent. The plane had taken off from Palwaukee about noon when the pilot reported engine trouble, Mark said. The plane turned back and tried to land, but on its first pass it was going too fast to hit the runway, said Todd Gressick, Palwaukee's airport operations coordinator, who witnessed the landing attempt.

The Cessna circled around, but its exposed landing gear clipped the northwest corner of the one-story Nedco building, about three- quarters of a mile from the airport.

The plane hit the ground about 12:20 p.m., at a time when there were only three employees inside Nedco, an electronics distribution office and warehouse, said Mike Costello, one of the general managers.

One of the employees, Brian Gebel, said he and a co-worker had just returned from picking up lunch when "it sounded like a train hit the building."

Shearing off its left wing, the Cessna crashed into some trees between Nedco and another building. Gebel said both occupants were pulling themselves from the fuselage.

"The plane is in pretty good shape for hitting a building," observed Dennis Rouleau, Palwaukee's airport manager.

Costello said the company hasn't assessed the damage yet and the building has been shut down.

Authorities confirmed there were no reported injuries on the ground.

The plane, a Cessna 421C "Golden Eagle," can hold up to eight people. It was not immediately known where the plane was headed.

Federal Aviation Administration records show the plane was built in 1976, is owned by Goldeneagleco Ltd., of Wilmington, Del., and its registration was current as of June 21.

John Aiken, owner of Air Data Research, a safety analysis firm in Helotes, Texas, near San Antonio, said the Cessna 421C "has an excellent reputation" among pilots, although inexperienced pilots are likely to wear out its engines faster.

- Daily Herald staff writer Jon Davis contributed to this report.

Source: Daily Herald; Arlington Heights, Ill.

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