Sheriff’s Office: Pilot taken to hospital ‘out of precaution’
Staff, News4JAX
HILLIARD, Fla. – A pilot suffered minor injuries when a small plane crashed Wednesday morning in the yard of a home in Hilliard, authorities said.
The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post that an aircraft crashed around 10:30 a.m. in the backyard of a home on Eastwood Road near Poole Road.
Flight tracking website FlightAware shows it crashed just 12 minutes after takeoff.
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, the pilot of a single-engine fixed-wing airplane was conducting maneuvers in the vicinity of Hilliard Airpark and then the airplane went into a stall, plummeted and struck a tree before breaking through the branches and hitting the ground.
The pilot — identified as a 69-year-old man from North Augusta, South Carolina — was later transported to an area hospital out of precaution with “non-life-threatening injuries,” according to authorities. The Federal Aviation Administration said he was the only person on board the Rans S-12.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, with NTSB taking the lead.
