By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer

A maintenance test flight Feb. 2 that lasted less than 15 minutes resulted in a fatal accident 1,700 feet from a runway at Kissimmee Gateway Airport that ejected both the pilot and the owner of the aircraft, the first preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board states.

The report, released Monday, outlined the final flight of the 1963 French-designed, two-seater, v-seated Fouga CM 170-Magister, owned by Wilton C. Lentz Jr., 61, of Kissimmee, since 2000.

Lentz’s mechanic, Carl Vernon, 53, of Texas, piloted this flight after conducting repairs on several hydraulic leaks.

According to a “discrepancy and correction sheet” found in Vernon’s truck, eight problems had to be remedied, including two leaks in the wheel well of the left main gear, a leak on the down line for the nose gear and a leak on the down line from the fuselage to the wing.

According to the NTSB report, Vernon held several flight certificates and logged 8,300 hours of flight time for his September 2010 Federal Aviation Administration certificate, the most recent one issued to him. Vernon radioed he was unfamiliar with the airport and received taxi instructions by the ground controller for the flight, the report stated.

The flight, which was not operated on a flight plan, was cleared for takeoff at 5:21 p.m., departed from the airport and flew approximately seven nautical miles from the airport. After four minutes of maneuvering, Vernon turned the plane around to land.

At 5:29 p.m., Vernon radioed to the control tower, “We had a good check here. We’d like to come back for landing.” Vernon’s last radio contact was recorded at 5:33 p.m.

There were no calls requesting help or suggesting mechanical errors.

The last radar contact, according to the report, showed the plane at a 90-degree angle before it slammed into an open field 1,700 feet from runway 24 near the corner of Thacker Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard next to Terry’s Electric.

This is consistent with eyewitness accounts of the accident.

David Castle, who lives on the corner of Thacker Avenue and West Hill Street, saud he stepped outside his home that evening because a plane was “louder than normal” and he wanted to see what type of plane it was.

As soon as he saw the plane’s left wing pointing “almost straight down” he knew there was trouble.

“The angle he was going, he couldn’t have landed. He knew,” Castle said of the pilot. “I thought that plane was going to hit Terry’s Electric.”

An unidentified witness account by a certified flight instructor waiting to take off at the time of the crash stated in the report the aircraft overshot its landing and was at a 90-degree angle before losing altitude and hitting the ground.

Both Vernon and Lentz were ejected on impact and due to the lack of identifying information in the cockpit, officials determined Vernon was the pilot after a friend positively identified his voice from the radio transmissions.

Lentz, who purchased the aircraft in 2000, held a commercial pilot license and was last issued a certificate from the FAA in January 2009, which indicated 1,500 hours of flight time. Lentz’s logbooks for this aircraft have not been located at the airport or by the family.

The accident is still under investigation by Paul Cox, senior air safety investigator for NTSB. A final report on the crash, determining a cause, may take up to a year to complete.