Embry-Riddle Student, FAA Examiner Fatally Injured

A Piper PA-28R-200 (Sample image shown--not actual aircraft) with two people on board broke up in flight Wednesday over Daytona, FL Wednesday, resulting in the fatal injury of an FAA examiner and Embry-Riddle student on board the airplane.

Radio station WNDB reports that the NTSB confirmed during a news conference Thursday that a wing came off the airplane, leading to the accident. “This is what I do know. The aircraft… was performing touch-and-go maneuvers at Daytona Beach International Airport on runway 25 left. There were two passengers on board, both of which were fatally injured,” said NTSB investigator Aaron McCarter at the Thursday morning news conference.

McCarter said that the NTSB team would be on scene for several days. The wreckage of the aircraft will be transported to Jacksonville, FL once the on-scene investigation is completed.

McCarter said that such an in-flight breakup is rare. He said there are "numerous factors that could cause the structural failure of a component that doesn’t necessarily have to do with the aircraft.”

The NTSB investigator said that the airplane had been checked before the accident flight, but that the airplane's maintenance records will be examined, and other students who had recently flown the airplane will be interviewed.

The preliminary report should be released by mid-April.

(Image from file. Not accident airplane)

FMI: Original report