Newtown Man Walks Away From Plane Crash

By Andrew Gorosko

A small airplane flown by a retired Newtown man crashed Wednesday morning while its pilot was practicing landings at Waterbury-Oxford Airport in Oxford, state police said.

State police said the pilot, John Moran, 61, of Newfield Lane, Newtown, who was flying alone about 11:30 am, received leg cuts and was shaken up, but otherwise appeared uninjured.

Mr Newfield had touched the plane down and was attempting to control the two-seater as it landed, but the single-engine aircraft veered off the left side of the runway and its landing gear collapsed, said state police Sergeant David Wagner. Mr Moran had built the Europa airplane from a kit.

Oxford ambulance staffers went to the crash scene and checked out Mr Moran, but he refused medical treatment, Sgt Wagner said.

The plane crash caused moderate damage to the front end of the Fiberglas airplane and it appears to be repairable, Sgt Wagner said. The plane crash closed the airport to air traffic for a time, he said.

Mr Moran said Thursday, “I got a scratch on my leg and that was it.” He said he had spent 3,700 hours across 41/2  years building the aircraft from a kit, a task which had proved much more complex and time-consuming than he had anticipated.

“It was a very, very sad thing, ” Mr Moran said of the plane crash. He said he had been planning to take a flight in the airplane soon to Fishers Island, with his wife as a passenger.

Mr Moran said he had been planning to use the aircraft during his retirement for flights around the US with his wife.

 Although he is unhappy that the plane crashed, the important thing is that he walked away from the crash, Mr Moran said. He said he does not plan to rebuild the damaged aircraft.

Mr Moran said that although he feels all right physically, it is depressing to see so much of his painstaking and exacting work on the plane damaged by the crash.

 Sgt Wagner said state police and the Federal Aviation Administration are jointly investigating the cause of the airplane crash. There are several such incidents annually at the airport, the sergeant said.