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The pilot who died in a small plane
crash outside a suburban Minnesota airport reported nothing unusual
in his radio transmission moments before the crash, a federal
investigator said Thursday.


      The pilot, who family members have identified as 53-year-old
Wayne Monson, had requested permission to perform a few landings
and takeoffs on Wednesday before heading to Osceola, Wis., said Pam
Sullivan, a senior air safety investigator for the National
Transportation Safety Board.


      Sullivan told the Star Tribune that a female student pilot, who
she would not identify, was also in the 1958 twin-engine Beechcraft
18. She did not confirm Monson was flying the plane but said the
student would not have been qualified to fly the plane.

      Autopsies were being conducted Thursday on both victims.

      Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory
said the plane had left the Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie
Wednesday when it turned around, tried to return to the airport and
crashed.

      Witnesses told investigators the plane failed to gain much
altitude.


      The plane was trying to take off between 11:30 a.m. and noon
when it "started wobbling back and forth and went down" in the
yard of a historic home that the city owns, said Eden Prairie
spokeswoman Joyce Lorenz. 


The plane did not touch the house, but a
piece did land on the porch. No one was inside the house.

      Andrew Osowski, 14, of Eden Prairie, said he was working with
about 20 children from a day care in a park down the road from the
airport when he saw a plane coming up at an angle.
      

"It just started teeter-tottering," Osowski said, adding that
smoke started coming from the right engine. "It turned, it just
went down at an angle. And we just heard 'boom!'"


      "It was scary. I saw black smoke, and once you see black smoke,
that's something that's very bad," Osowski said.


      Monson had extensive aviation experience, but not with the plane
he was flying, his son Brandon said Thursday. Brandon said his
father bought the plane a year ago and repaired it on his own.

      "He was fixing it up to take it on vacations during the
summer," Brandon Monson said.


      Wayne Monson was born in Mankato, grew up in south-central
Minnesota and was living in Osceola, Wis., and Hibbing, Minn.,
according to his mother, Sylvia Monson. He's the second oldest of
five children.

      Monson's ex-wife, Sherri Monson, said her former husband was an
experienced pilot.

      "We had flown when we were married. He had handled many
difficult situations and had survived them," Sherri Monson,
Brandon's mother, said.

Gallery

2 killed in small plane crash near Eden Prairie airport

Disasters

The pilot who died in a small plane
crash outside a suburban Minnesota airport reported nothing unusual
in his radio transmission moments before the crash, a federal
investigator said Thursday.


NTSB: Pilot didn't call for help before small plane crashed

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