Despite Crashes, Leesburg Airport Considered Safe

November 11, 2005 - 9:34am

LEESBURG, Va. -- The fatal crash near the Leesburg Executive Airport Wednesday was the fifth in three years. Nine people died in those crashes. So is there a problem at that airport?

"This is a very safe airport," said Chris Dancy of Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. "At this point it's far too early to know if there's any trend."

The airport handled 94,000 takeoffs and landings in each of the last three years - a 10 percent increase since the regional air space restrictions went into effect after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Dancy said Leesburg has a good safety record, even without a control tower or instrument landing system.

"Better than 50 percent of all the flights in the United States are under visual flight rules," he said. "You refer to the instruments, but you don't fly solely by reference to them. You fly by looking out the window."

Three of the fatal crashes in Leesburg were the result of inclement weather, Dancy said.

Wednesday's crash killed two men, a student pilot and an instructor. State Police identified the student pilot as Peter C. Jesinsky, 43, of Purcellville, and the instructor as Craig M. Schulz, 24, of Middleburg.

"About 300 yards from the runway, the plane veered off to the right and took a nose dive into this wooded area and crashed," Virginia State Police spokesman Terry Licklider said, citing witnesses' accounts of the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

"The investigation, as you might imagine, is in its very earliest stages," Brian Rayner, an NTSB safety investigator, said Wednesday. "We're here on the scene to document the wreckage."

Rayner said the wreckage would be examined in more detail - possibly by Monday - at an aircraft recovery facility in Delaware.

Wednesday's crash came about a year after two elderly people were killed near Leesburg Airport while trying to land.