Father, Stepmother Both Fatally Injured When Their Private Plane Went Down In Michigan

It was the second time a Fort Wayne, IN, teenager had been involved in an airplane accident, and he has lost nearly his entire immediate family as the result of the two tragedies.

Sixteen-year-old Austin Hatch was the only survivor when the Beechcraft Bonanza his father was flying went down in the northwestern portion of Michigan's lower peninsula. His father and stepmother were both fatally injured. The airplane reportedly impacted a garage near the Charlevoix, MI, Municipal Airport, though few other details about the accident are available. The family was reportedly on their way to a vacation property Austin's father Steven co-owned with his brothers in Walloon Lake, MI, according to the Associated Press. 

Steven and Austin Hatch had survived a 2003 accident in which the plane they were flying hit a utility pole during an emergency landing attempt in Indiana while returning from the same vacation property. That accident fatally injured Hatch's mother Julie, as well as a younger brother and sister.

Hatch, reportedly a standout high school basketball player, had just accepted a full scholarship to play for Michigan, where his father and mother had both gone to college. The Fort Wayne News Sentinel reports that doctors in Michigan had recently brought the young man out of a medically-induced coma, and that they are optimistic about his prospects for recovery.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov