New details have emerged regarding Saturday’s plane crash at Martha’s Vineyard Airport.
At 3:12 pm on Saturday, an inbound, private six-seat aircraft crash-landed at the Island’s primary airport after the 79-year-old pilot suffered a medical emergency.
Midair, the sole passenger aboard the Piper Malibu Meridian single turboprop plane, a 68-year-old woman who is assumed to be the pilot’s wife took control of the aircraft and without engaging the plane’s landing gear, was able to land it near the airport’s runway.
The plane was largely intact, with the exception of its left wing, which snapped in half in the crash.
Airport operations employees were then able to extract the unresponsive pilot from the grounded plane, and he was given CPR by first responders. He was quickly brought to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital before being transferred to Boston for additional treatment.
It’s since been confirmed that the pilot, who has not yet been officially identified, has survived the ordeal, although he remains in hospital in serious condition.
The woman who successfully landed the plane managed to do so without sustaining major injury.
According to flight logs, the small plane departed from a Westchester, N.Y., airport Saturday at 2:13 pm. Once in Vineyard airspace, the plane circled the Martha’s Vineyard Airport roughly three times before crash-landing.
From around 3 pm to the time of crash-landing 12 minutes later, flight logs show the plane experienced a number of abrupt speed, direction, and altitude changes.
Prior to Saturday’s incident, the plane had made a number of successful flights to and from Westchester County, the most recent being May 21.
The plane is registered in Norwalk, Conn., to owners of a Florida-based company, Access Boat Sales, Inc. Florida business records list Connecticut resident Randolph Bonnist and his wife, Robin Bonnist, as owners. It has not been officially confirmed that they were the pair who survived the crash. Randolph is a certified pilot, according to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) records.
The incident remains under investigation by the FAA, the National Transportation Safety Board, and Massachusetts State Police.
