Aviation "incident"

Yesterday, on his second day as an intern at Chicago Executive Airport, my son, Josh, witnessed an incident - a euphemism for an accident. Confidentiality prevented him from sharing specifics, but this is what I understand happened. An airplane had just taken off from runway 31, when it veered left, losing altitude, heading toward the Atlantic Aviation hanger. The pilot gained enough control to avoid crashing into the hanger or parked airplanes and land on taxiway L. Seemingly the aileron cable broke. No one was injured and the fire department was turned back before it arrived.



From Josh's description, I gather the airplane was a single-engine Cessna, probably designed by his grandfather. As I recall a story from my dad, his only "incident" as a pilot was at the same airport. Dad was making a delivery flight, was low on fuel, and he had to fly around and below jurisdictions for Midway and O'Hare. He had to fly in formation to the airport with another airplane as one of them did not have a radio. Yes, general aviation was more basic in the 1960s. On approach Dad lost power and I think he had a forced landing short of the runway. While Dad's short-term memory was failing him in the last few years of his life, given enough time, he could still pull up long-term memories. I miss being able to talk with him and I know he would be greatly interested in what Josh is learning in his studies to be an air traffic controller.