A 46-year-old pilot from St. Augustine died Saturday morning when his plane crashed during a stunt practice session at Keystone Heights Airport in Bradford County, Florida.
The pilot was pronounced dead at 10:48 a.m., according to local news station WCJB TV20. The media outlet said the plane crashed at Florida International Rally & Motorsports Park, which is part of the airport, according to Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith.
The sheriff’s office and Bradford County Fire Rescue did not respond to requests for comment from NTD News prior to publication.
Neither the NTSB or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) responded to requests for comment from NTD News prior to publication.
The crash site has been secured, and the FAA and NTSB authorities have launched an investigation into what caused the deadly incident.
Smith provided limited details in his initial alert, noting that information remained scarce in the immediate aftermath.
July proved particularly deadly for small plane pilots. Search teams located a Piper PA-28 that vanished near Yellowstone National Park by tracking a victim’s smartwatch. All three occupants died in that crash. That same month, a Murphy SR3500 Moose aircraft crashed in a densely forested area at Olympic National Park in Washington, killing one person and injuring two others, according to the National Park Service.
Also in July, a North Carolina family of four perished when their private plane crashed in a field northeast of Sanford.
Not all recent crashes have ended in tragedy. In August, veteran pilot Mark Finkelstein successfully executed an emergency water landing near Oak Island Pier on North Carolina’s coast after his engine failed. “Once it stopped, I just said, ‘Okay, I’m really going to be doing a water landing,’ you know, there’s no alternative at this point,” Finkelstein told local media WWAY. He escaped with only minor injuries.
