The pilot of a small private plane that crashed in Trenton this week was the founder of a South Carolina teleservices company.
Michael Leibowitz, 71, was at the controls of the plane when it slammed into the ground next to the runway at Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport at around 12:25 p.m. Thursday, according to Maine State Police.
Both Leibowitz and his passenger — Christina Chung, 57, of Livingston, New Jersey — died in the crash, police said.
Leibowitz, of Charleston, South Carolina, was the founder of Call Experts, a telecommunications services company that he established in that state in 1982, according to a report on the crash by The Post and Courier newspaper. He also was an avid runner who posted dozens of photos of himself and his medals from races around the country on his Facebook page.
It was not clear Friday why Leibowitz and Chung had decided to fly to Maine. Leibowitz had piloted the single-engine Cirrus SR22 to Trenton after the pair took off from Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey earlier in the day, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Leibowitz’s daughter, Abby Leibowitz, who now runs the company he founded, did not respond Friday to messages seeking comment about the plane crash.
Information about Chung could not immediately be confirmed.
The cause of the crash, which is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, has not yet been determined. Investigators with the federal agency were expected to arrive Friday at the airport, where the plane wreckage remains near a security fence east of the runway.
Sam Wilson, who works at a business near the airport, told the Bangor Daily News on Thursday that he was outside when he heard and then saw the plane flying — apparently upside down — as it emerged from thick fog on its landing approach. The plane then steeply plummeted into the ground, instantly bursting into flames and exploding, he said.
According to NTSB data, there have been only six other fatal airplane crashes in Maine in the past decade, all of which involved small private aircraft. Ten people total died in those previous crashes, which date back to Jan. 1, 2014.
Prior to Thursday, the most recent fatal crash at the Trenton airport was in 1996, when a plane that investigators later estimated to be overweight crashed shortly after takeoff. The pilot died but a passenger survived.
Maine’s deadliest plane crash occurred in 1944, when an Army bomber crashed in South Portland during its approach for landing at Portland’s airport. The Army pilot and engineer on the plane died, along with 17 people on the ground at a nearby trailer park where the bomber crashed, for a total of 19 deaths.
In 1979, 17 people on a commercial passenger flight died when a plane operated by Downeast Airlines crashed as it approached Knox County Regional Airport in Owls Head for landing. A 16 year-old boy from Searsmont who was on the plane was the only survivor.
