We lost one of the truly good humans among us in the aviation family last weekend. And it happened in an accident that strikes me—ahead of any official report from the National Transportation Safety Board or otherwise—as a confluence of objective hazards and bad luck.
In an accident on October 1 at the Lake Placid Airport (KLKP) in New York, Richard McSpadden was in the right seat of a Cessna 177RG Cardinal, with pilot and former New England Patriots tight end Russ Francis in the left seat. The Cardinal was flying as a single ship and had just lifted off when a so-far undefined emergency caused them to initiate a return to the ground. Though the pair survived the subsequent forced landing into the trees—based on photos released of the scene—they both died soon afterward.
