[M]ORRISTOWN – A couple visiting Vermont from Connecticut and the owner of a glider company where identified Thursday as the three people killed a day earlier when the aircraft they were in crashed during a sightseeing tour over the Stowe region.
Rescue crews late Thursday afternoon recovered the bodies of Donald Post, 70, of Stowe, who was the pilot of the glider that crashed, and his two passengers Suzanne Moroz, 56, and her husband Frank Moroz III, 58, both of Hamden, Connecticut.
Post is the long-time head of the company that owned the glider, Stowe Soaring, which operates out of the Morrisville-Stowe State Airport.
“He had a passion for gliders,” Russell Barr, CEO Stowe Aviation, the airport’s private operator, said Thursday afternoon.
Barr called the news of Post’s death “devastating.”
People at the airport and Stowe Soaring declined comment Thursday.
Police said they believe the Connecticut couple were in the Stowe area vacationing and decided to take a glider tour late Wednesday morning. Rescue crews located wreckage of the downed aircraft later that evening.
Throughout the day Thursday, all-terrain vehicles shuttled rescue crews to and from the crash site, which is off the Long Trail more than a mile from the Beaver Meadow Trailhead in Morristown, and about 1,500 feet higher in elevation.
The fuselage of the glider is reported to be intact, with the wings torn away in the crash, according to police.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation by both the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.
It’s unclear if weather or a medical event may have played a role in the Wednesday crash.
“It was windy in this general area, but that’s all we have,” Vermont State Police Capt. Robert Cushing said Thursday.
State Police, in conjunction with numerous other agencies, coordinated the efforts to recover the bodies of the three victims from the remote location.
The recovery operation started around 9 a.m. Thursday and ran through 5 p.m., when the bodies were brought to a staging area at the trailhead. All three bodies were expected to be taken to the Vermont Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington for autopsies.
The Morristown Police Department is heading the investigation into the deaths of the occupants of the glider because the crash took place in that town.
Morristown Police Chief Richard Keith said Thursday that he didn’t anticipate any criminal charges arising from the investigation.
“No, not at this point based on what we know,” he said, adding. “I’m sure it’s an accident.”
Brian Rayner, a senior air safety investigator with the NTSB who arrived at the airport Thursday, described the flight as a sightseeing trip, which was expected to last for about 30 minutes.
However, the aircraft did not return the airport when expected. At first, Rayner said, officials with the company did not suspect anything wrong.
“At 45 minutes they thought they were just getting a nice long ride, at an hour they became concerned,” Rayner said. “Shortly after that, they began a search.”
The glider, he added, had no flight recorder, electronics or radio equipment. The pilot, Post, did not utilize a handheld radio or any other type of communication device, according to Rayner.
“He stayed very close by locally, and within sight of home base,” the investigator said, describing Post as an “experienced” commercial pilot.
According to the FAA database, the aircraft was a Schweizer glider, model SGS 2-32. The glider, which has no engine, was manufactured in 1973, according to the database.
A timeline of key events:
– 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, a tow plane with the glider attached departed from the airport at about 11:30 a.m.
– 11:50 a.m. Wednesday, the glider disconnected over Spruce Peak in Stowe.
– 1:56 p.m. Wednesday, the Morristown Police Department received a report that the glider was missing.
– 5:35 p.m. Wednesday, the crew of an aircraft launched from the airport located what appeared to be the glider approximately 1,000 feet from the summit of Sterling Mountain.
– 9:35 p.m., Wednesday, search and rescue crews reached the wreckage of a glider and locate the bodies of the three people who had been aboard the aircraft.
– 9 a.m., search and rescue crews began recovery efforts at the Beaver Meadow Trailhead.
– 5 p.m. Thursday, emergency crews recovered the bodies of the three victims of the glider crash.
At the entrance to the airport Thursday afternoon, a single rose with a card in an envelope attached had been dropped off and left just next to the door.
