More From The Mobile Register
Longtime pilot dies in crash
Paul Conner was flying experimental aircraft
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
By RUSS HENDERSON and BRENDAN KIRBY
Staff Reporters

ST. ELMO -- An Army flying veteran with more than 30 years' experience in a cockpit
died Monday when his experimental, rear-propellered aircraft crashed just west of the
small airport here.

The small, white plane piloted by Paul Conner, 57, of Grand Bay circled back shortly
after taking off from the air strip at R.P. Crigler Sr. Aeroplex, Mobile County
sheriff's deputies said.

It then spiraled into a copse of trees between the airport and a neighboring farm
field. Deputies received the call at about 3:50 p.m., said Chief Deputy Mark Barlow.

No others were traveling inside the four-seater airplane, he said.

Conner was a well-known aviator at the airport, and built the fixed-wing,
Canard-style airplane himself from a kit, other pilots at the airport said. He is
listed as the aircraft's builder on its Federal Aviation Administration registration.

A deputy arrived at the airport shortly after the call, then after some searching
through the woods found the aircraft, Barlow said. Conner had apparently died on
impact, he said. County maintenance workers were called in to cut a trail into the
thick foliage, and Conner's body was removed about two hours after the crash.

The white, fiberglass fuselage of the airplane stood, still steeped in green leaves
and white blooms, at the end of a freshly cut trail roped off by yellow police tape
late Monday afternoon. The aircraft will remain there until investigators with the
National Transportation and Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are
done with it, Barlow said.

Conner's body was turned over to the state Department of Forensic Sci ences for an
autopsy, Barlow said. The cause of the accident is being investigated by the FAA and
the NTSB, with help from the Mobile County Sheriff's Office, Barlow said.

Douglas Johnstone, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice who flies an experimental
plane at the St. Elmo airport, said he could not speculate about the cause of
Monday's crash.

Despite their designation, Johnstone said, experimental airplanes have a good record
of safety and performance.

"It doesn't really mean that you don't know whether the thing will fly again," he
said. "I think the experimental airplane community at all levels ... (has) a very
good safety record."

Homebuilt aircraft have existed as long as powered flight, according to the
Experimental Aircraft Association, which counts the Wright brothers as the first
makers of homebuilt planes. Today, tens of thousands of homebuilt aircraft fly
throughout the world, according to the group's Web site.

Johnstone, who left the high court this year after deciding not to seek re-election,
said the experimental airplane industry had its genesis in lawsuits that drove
Cessna, Piper and other manufacturers out of the business of making inexpensive,
single-engine personal planes. He said the companies could not afford the liability.

Companies then cropped up all over the country selling kits to folks who built their
own planes. Johnstone estimated that about 80 compa nies sell airplane kits, which
vary widely in size and complexity. He said the FAA lists folks who assemble
airplanes from kits as "owner-builders" as long as they perform at least 51 percent
of the labor.

Congress eventually passed a law shielding manufacturers from lawsuits, allowing them
to begin making small, non-jet airplanes again. But the community of do-it-yourself
airplane builders has persisted.

Johnstone said most experimental aircraft owners modify the basic kit to create
unique designs. He said he, for instance, added large wheels to his
"Johnstone-Quicksilver."

The Experimental Aircraft Association's Web site states that a "significant number of
homebuilt aircraft have flown around the globe" and that one, the Voyager in 1986,
remains the only plane ever to circle the earth nonstop on a single tank of fuel.

(Correspondent Greta Sharp contributed to this story.)

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