Tacoma man survives crash landing on Whidbey Island

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, January 13, 2002

Herald staff and news services

CLINTON — A Tacoma student pilot survived the crash of a 1976 Cessna 150 airplane Sunday on southeast Whidbey Island, Island County sheriff’s officials said Sunday night.

Todd Fossberg, 37, was heading back to Tacoma after flying to Bellingham when the plane’s engine quit. He apparently tried to restart it before crash landing in a field at about 2:45 p.m., said Jan Smith, spokeswoman for the Island County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene shortly after and found that Fossberg’s plane snagged a barbed wire fence and nosed dived into a dirt field. Smith described the area as rural, remote and lightly treed, near Schumacher Road off Midvale Road.

The pilot was not injured and was able to crawl out of the plane and walk away from the site, said FAA duty officer Karen Byrd. The pilot did not seek medical attention.

No one else was on board at the time of the incident, Smith said.

Fossberg had taken off from the Tacoma Narrows Airstrip and was en route back there. He is a student at Vephyr Aviation and has clocked 55 hours of flying time.

In a separate accident, one person was killed when a small plane crashed near Ilwaco, off the Washington coast near Long Beach. Witnesses said they saw the plane sputter and then nose dive into the ground.

The pilot’s name was not released by the FAA.