Crime & Safety

Pilot and Passenger Escape Injury After Plane Flips

The two people on-board a single engine plane that flipped at Beverly Municipal Airport were OK.

A pilot who rented an airplane from Beverly Flight Center and his passenger both escaped unscathed after the plane they were in flipped on Wednesday at Beverly Municipal Airport.

Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and the state aeronautics inspector both arrived and were investigating, said Airport Manager Robert Mezzetti.

The pilot and his passenger had “no obvious injuries” and did not need to go to the hospital, said Beverly Fire Department Capt. Michael McCadden.

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McCadden said Beverly firefighters worked with responders from the Danvers and Wenham fire departments plus Lyons ambulance and Northeast Regional ambulance, who were all called to the airport just before noon on Wednesday.

It was determined that nothing was burning and there was no leaking fluids, he said, but “there was definitely damage” to the aircraft.

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Mezzetti said the plane, a Bellanca 7KCAB built in 1977, was landing on runway 9-27 at the time of the incident and had just come in from the Beverly side.

“He said he veered left and then gave it right rudder,” Mezzetti said. That’s when the plane crossed the runway and ended up in the soft grass alongside the runway, flipping the plane.

The plane’s propeller was bent and there was a small gash in the side of the fuselage, Mezzetti said. The plane is repairable, he said, and was removed from the grass by a crane. It was then towed back to North Atlantic Air, on the Danvers side of the airport.

The plane's owner, Joe Gibbons of Topsfield, leases the plane to Beverly Flight Center, he told WFXT-TV channel 25, and he was not on board.


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