New Jersey paramedic responding to plane crash finds that pilot who died was his father
New Jersey paramedic responding to plane crash finds that pilot who died was his father
By LORENA MONGELLI and BILL SANDERSON
New York Post
January 17, 2007
In a tragic twist, a medic who responded to a fiery plane crash on a suburban New Jersey street found to his horror that the pilot who died was his father, it was reported last night.
Andrew Coppolo, 55, of Atlantic Highlands, N.J., went down in a fireball on a street in Wayne Monday evening. The burning plane took out several mailboxes before screeching to a halt in the driveway of a home on Nellis Drive.
His son, Scott Coppolo, 25, works at nearby St. Joseph's Hospital and responded to the scene, unaware the crashed plane was his father's Beechcraft, which had been headed for Essex County Airport, WABC/Channel 7 said, quoting the town's police chief.
The highly experienced pilot, who'd taken off from North Carolina, reported no problems in the minutes before the crash.
Coppolo, a pilot for 30 years, had a commercial license and taught students to fly fixed-wing planes and helicopters.
"The air was his comfort zone . . . He would go over checklist after checklist. He wanted to make sure everything was right," Maggie Coppolo, 19, said of her father.
The aircraft had departed from Charlotte, N.C., and was heading toward Essex County Airport in Fairfield, FAA spokesman Jim Peters said. Wayne is 5 miles northeast of Fairfield, N.J.
The pilot contacted the airport tower at 7:36 p.m., indicating the craft was just over 11 miles from the runway, Peters said. Three minutes later, the pilot reported the craft was just over 6 miles away.
At 7:41 p.m., the pilot reported the craft was just over 3 miles away and was given clearance to land.
Two minutes later, the Essex air controller asked if the Beechcraft had engaged its landing light, but received no response, Peters said. Repeated inquiries also met with silence, he said.
Weather was described as foggy at the time. The plane struck some trees, flipped over, and smashed into the middle of a road, then came to rest in the driveway of a home. No one was at home at the time.
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