LONDONDERRY — A small plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in Londonderry at approximately 7:30 a.m. Friday morning shortly after takeoff from nearby Manchester-Boston Regional Airport.
The only occupant was the pilot, who survived the crash and was conscious when extricated by first responders, according to the Londonderry fire chief, who reported that the pilot made the 911 call reporting the crash after suffering “serious injuries.”
The Beechcraft 99 airplane, a small, two-engine aircraft identified as Wiggins Air Flight 1046, crashed on Colonial Drive in Londonderry.
“He was probably 70 feet from a single-family residence, right where the lawn of this residence met the tree line of the woods,” said Londonderry Fire Chief Bo Butler. “So it was very, very close.”
Officials from Manchester-Boston Regional Airport said shortly after taking off, the pilot called into air-traffic control to report an emergency with his plane. The plane crash landed approximately five miles away from the airport.
The pilot, who has yet to be identified, was taken to a local hospital in New Hampshire after being freed from the wreck. Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to a Boston-area hospital.
The plane crashed at 5 Colonial Drive. The homeowner, Eddie Saktanaset, said it was a complete shock to the household.
“You don’t get plane crashes behind your houses,” Saktanaset said. “It kind of freaked me out a little bit. Kind of scared me. I’ve never seen anything like that happen before.”
Skatanaset lives in the home with his wife and 11-year-old son. The plane ended up settling approximately 20 feet from one of his free-standing garages, approximately 100 feet from his house.
“Living close to the airport, I have always thought in [my] mind like, if something were to happen like this and then it actually happened,” Skatanaset said. “I’ve heard plane engines before, like loud engine noises all the time. So [a crash] comes through your mind sometimes.”
He was thankful the crash happened while his son was at school, and that the plane missed his garages, house, and playground in his backyard. He was also glad to know the pilot was alive and conscious the entire time crews were working on the rescue.
Skatanaset said it took approximately an hour for rescue workers to free the pilot, using the Jaws of Life.
Butler said the team that attended to this wreck worked extremely well and quickly to get the situation under control. Despite the 250 gallons of fuel onboard at the time of the crash, nothing caught on fire.
“Why there was no fire, I do not know,” said Ted Kitchens, the Director of Aviation at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. “I think it was, as we said several times today, the pilot’s lucky day.”
The road was blocked off at the intersection of Colonial Drive and Wiley Hill Road by police while rescue crews worked to clear the area. There were at least seven or eight crews that responded to the crash, Butler said.
A state HazMat team is on the scene cleaning up gallons of fuel that spilled from the aircraft, since it had just taken off.
“This was a very significant emergency response that we responded to, and a lot of things could have gone wrong further than the aircraft crashing itself,” Butler said. “The mitigation efforts were very, very impactful and successful in this case.”
The responding battalion from Londonderry was the same team that worked on the Mammoth Road fatal car crash on Jan. 11 and also responded to the submerged truck in Beaver Brook on Dec. 23, 2023, Butler said.
He added that this battalion is one of the youngest at the fire department, with one of the firefighters being only 19-years-old.
I’m so proud of those guys,” Butler said. “They’re pulling, for us, high risk, low frequency [events]. We don’t do them all the time, so we don’t have experience to fall back on when it happens. Because of the high risk, we’re talking jet fuel all over the ground, flammable liquids…there’s so many things that can go wrong and it didn’t.”
Rescue workers are still investigating any property damage, said Saktanaset. No information is currently available on damage to property in the neighborhood, other than downed power lines.
Further down Wiley Hill Road, crews worked on downed power lines. Flight data show that the pilot flew over the embankment off of Wiley Hill Road, causing downed power lines in that area.
Kitchens said the flight was a small cargo shipment, a routine flight that happened daily from the airport. The flight departed from Manchester and was headed to Presque Isle, Maine, according to the FAA, which has already launched an investigation.