Plane crash kills 2 near Stanwood

Published 11:23 pm Saturday, February 16, 2008

STANWOOD — A Camano Island woman with a passion for flight and her niece died Saturday when the plane they were flying crashed in a field south of Stanwood.

Right before the crash, the pilot, Ann Price, 54, told her husband that her plane was losing power and she was trying to land, Snohomish County sheriff’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hover said.

Shortly before 1 p.m., a neighbor called 911 and reported that while the plane was landing, it flipped on its nose and crashed, Hover said.

The pilot and her 34-year-old niece from Oak Harbor died before rescuers arrived.

“It basically hit the ground and stopped instantly,” Hover said. “It nose-dived.”

The women were flying from the Arlington Airport to a private airstrip at the pilot’s Camano Island home. Price was an experienced pilot who owned the experimental fixed-wing plane she was flying.

“She was an awesome pilot,” said Terry Burch, owner of Things With Wings experimental aircraft maintenance company in Arlington. “Everybody’s pretty floored about the accident. It’s a shock. Occasionally when you’ve been in aviation a long time, you lose friends. And occasionally there’s people who have accidents and people go, ‘Of course they had an accident. It was just a matter of time.’ Ann was not one of those. She was a really, really good pilot.”

Burch provided maintenance on Price’s plane and helped her learn to fly it. He was impressed by both her skill and her heart. She volunteered her time flying sick children to doctor’s appointments.

“She was just one of the best pilots in those airplanes that I’ve every flown with,” Burch said. “She was a very sharp lady. She’s a very good hearted person. She’s soft spoken, but very focused when she was in the airplane.”

Price and her husband, developer Scott Price, owned two planes and homes on Camano Island and in Bellevue.

The couple frequented the Arlington Airport. Price would sometimes pilot her husband to and from Camano Island for dinner, Burch said.

She finished second place in an International Aerobatic Club competition that involved precision flying in Ephrata in 2004.

Shortly before the accident, Stanwood resident William Martin saw Price’s plane circling and heard it sputter as he was working in his garage, about a mile from the crash.

“I watched the plane circle around,” he said. “It took a loop around and came back through and just about then … It started sputtering and sputtering.”

The plane then disappeared from his vision.

It landed at nearly a 90- degree angle in an open field near a farmhouse at the end of 95th Avenue. Several people who live nearby said they didn’t hear anything unusual until emergency sirens began wailing.

Kathy Klingenberg lives by the field and was eating lunch with her husband when the plane crashed.

“We didn’t hear anything loud,” she said, standing on her deck and staring out at the plane. “There was nothing. The first thing I knew, the fire trucks were coming.”

The Klingenbergs looked out their window and saw the plane’s tail jutting out of the soil. They didn’t see any fire or smoke.

“Where you see it is exactly where it hit the first time,” Hover said. “It stayed there.”

Chris Walton was fishing with friends on Hat Slough, watching planes overheard shortly before the crash.

“We tried to take pictures of the planes that were flying around in circles,” the Mountlake Terrace man said. “We heard sirens and didn’t know what it was.”

Price was well-known and respected at the Arlington Airport, and word of the crash spread pretty quickly Saturday, said Jerry Painter, owner of Wild Blue Aviation.

“Arlington is an interesting little airport,” he said. “It’s not like most airports. It’s not so much business-oriented. It’s not like Paine Field or Boeing Field, where you have a big business operation. … It’s mostly low key people who just love to go flying. It’s a fairly close-knit little group up there; so I think (the crash) had a pretty good effect on people.”

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the crash, with assistance from the sheriff’s office.

Herald Writer Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com