TMZ has eyewitnesses and video of Roy Halladay flying like he was performing an air show.
When witnesses made their way over to his wrecked plane they said, “it was obvious he was dead.”
That’s not a good thing to have said about you after an accident. That pretty much means you were jacked up beyond all reasonable doubt.
Roy Halladay was a great pitcher.
Roy Halladay sounds like he was a great man.
RIP.
Another sad part of this is that Halladay’s wife can be seen on a previous video stating that she was dead set against him flying.. at first.
Then she said, “I get it,” after taking a ride with her husband.
ht/ js
Too bad this happened but at least he was enjoying himself.
He was a real plane down to Earth guy.
You pays your money…
You take your chances.
Well as they say in the Air Force, There’s old pilots, and there’s bold pilots. But there ain’t no old, bold pilots”.
There isn’t much that’s more fun than horseassing around in your own airplane – and terrifying all at the same time.
R.I.P.
What a damn dummy! He was like a teenager in his dad’s sports car. A wife and two teenage kids. Sad story for the survivors.
Very seldom more than one chance on a motorcycle or an airplane.
2 kids without a dad…Ryan and Braden Halladay.
My college roommate screwed his airplane into the side of the rocky mountains in a snowstorm leaving 3 kids. His wife had died a couple years earlier. Luckily he had remarried because I cannot imagine being a kid without a parent. Flying small aircraft has great risk, I realize people love it and think it will never happen to them but as we see today that is not the case.
@Vietvet:
Mostly true, of course, but Chuck Yeager comes to mind as a noteworthy exception. He is still with us at age 94, and he was a mighty bold pilot.
Horsing around in your own airplane, you usually only get one mistake doing that. I had a buddy in Alaska that made a bunch of money in real estate. Bought himself a plane and thought he was a bush pilot. Ended up on the side of mountain, they didn’t find him for several years. I’m glad he was by himself that time. He was one that couldn’t wait for someone to go flying with him.
The thing about aviation is that it isn’t inherently dangerous, but it is utterly unforgiving of those who are careless and act on bad judgment. Sad to say, it looks like Halladay was guilty of both, and the ground rose up and smote him.
Not sure about those Icon A5’s. Last August one of their test pilots was killed in one.
QUICK FACTS
*ICON A5
*Can take off from water
*Only about 20 made
*Roy was one of the first to fly it
*Almost no actual flying hours accumulated
*Roy owned it less than a month
*Father was a commercial pilot
*Plane’s chief designer and test pilot died while flying one earlier this year
*Another plane crashed in April off of Key Largo, injuring two. Pilot said it descended faster than he expected.
LIFE IMITATING ART:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0h_cvVGMcQ
How many times did Chuck Yeager use the ejection seat lever I wonder?
He was a real nice guy.
“*Another plane crashed in April off of Key Largo, injuring two. Pilot said it descended faster than he expected.”
That’s what I’ve heard. They get low and they have the aero of a rock.
Icons been chasing Venture Capital for a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gujFdn5Woe4
That’s a funny thing about plane crashes, they descend faster than you think, then they come to an abrupt stop.
Never overestimate your ability. A pilot with limited experience in the sports car of planes. Not going to end well.
@Uncle Al (at 2:23 pm): Believe it or not, I had him in my mind when I typed my comment, thinking “I bet some smarta- er, I mean, knowledgeable person – is going to come along and mention Chuck Yeager or somebody like him, just to spite me.” I really did. However, I would like to point out that there is a difference between being calculatingly aggressive and “bold”, which in the context of the original quote implies overconfidence in one’s abilities.
I believe that Yeager was the former, not the latter.
🙂
Like a couple of my ex-girlfriends, flying is completely unforgiving.
I used to have my pilot’s license. A taxiing incident were I nearly clipped my wing on a parked plane convinced me I wasn’t as aware as when I was younger. I flew back to my home airport that night, parked the plane and never went back. My gosh did I want to. I kept thinking “it was only once, you were laughing with the other people in the plane about the dinner conversation….” Then it hit. I could kill others as well as me. I don’t want to fly alone, so what’s the point? After 15 years away I sometimes still get the urge.
Poor choice of plane. I see Icon up at EAA Oshkosh peddling their nonsense. Never did like their getup.
Chuck Yeager only has one ejection I believe ..F105 high altitude
test on retro rockets for steering ..and in His own admission
was playing around with them too long (105,000 ft?) Caught His
face on fire (oxygen feed) He bailed out of a couple in WWII .
He also barrel rolled the Bell X-1 after successfully breaking
the sound barrier…Engineers said that should have caused it
to explode (all this off the top of My head from His book)
Pilots are pimps. Shit happens. Yeager is our God.
Next tragedy.
I was out on my boat when I heard the distress call on VHF. We could see the recovery effort on the horizon. Very sad. He just did a Christian charity event. He also tweeted out last week that flying low over the water felt like flying a fighter jet. RIP.
This aircraft is what is known as Light Sport, so to fly one you need only a Sport Pilot license. A sport pilot only needs to hold a valid US driver’s license, they do not need a medical certificate. You only need 20 hours of training as a sport pilot, of which 5 hours are solo. As a sport pilot you can only carry one passenger, daytime visual flight rules only, the aircraft can only go about 90 knots and must weigh under about 1500lbs total at takeoff. There are many other limitations to that class license, it isn’t the same as a private pilot license which requires twice the training time but also gains far more privileges.
I don’t know much about his flying history, but my guess is he was inexperienced and tried to fly beyond his and the aircraft’s ability.
Phuck dat!
There’s a whole lot more airplanes in the water than submarines in the air. Think about it.
We got better engineers.
@bcattin: It was an F104 starfighter. He also bailed out of a P51 over europe in WWII (pre-ejection seat days) french resistance helped him hike to neutral Spain over the pyranes mountains. Heard him tell the story at Oshkosh in ’04.