NTSB To Be At Crossfield Accident Site Friday

An investigatory team from the National Transportation Safety Board was expected to be on scene Thursday night in Ranger, GA, where Scott Crossfield's Cessna 210A went down in the vicinity of thunderstorms late Wednesday.

Representatives with the NTSB say investigators will head to the scene of the wreckage, located about 3.3 miles northwest of the nearby town of Ludville, Friday -- but added that storms from a system similar to the one Crossfield is believed to have encountered before the accident Wednesday are still blowing through the area, and that may delay investigators' arrival at the remote accident site.

Oris Hendricks, who lives near the area where Crossfield's plane was found Thursday afternoon, told ANN she saw the aircraft fly near her house moments before it crashed.

The plane flew overhead "during the storm coming over, and it was lightning real bad," she said. "I just heard a sound like a motor cutting out, so I ran out to the end of the porch, into the yard, and I saw the plane come down nose first, like it was trying to turn, and it just went over the pines on the other side. My husband ran up the road to see if he could see smoke or a fire, but he didn't see anything."

"I knew the plane was acting up," Hendricks added.

Crossfield's aircraft, registry N6579X (below), was a 1960 Cessna 210A -- one of the original models of Cessna's top-of-the-line piston single.

NTSB records show the aircraft had been involved in one prior accident, before Crossfield owned the plane -- a 1978 bounced landing that resulted in a landing gear collapse. 

(Aero-News thanks AirNikon for providing the above photo of Crossfield's plane, taken in 1999.)

FMI: www.ntsb.gov