The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office this afternoon identified the victim of Friday evening’s plane crash in the isolated woods of southwest Flagler County as Thomas Russell Harvey, a 75-year-old pilot celebrated by Skydive Palatka as “our favorite pilot and friend.”
A resident of Jacksonville, Harvey was a retired U.S. Air Force crew chief and master sergeant. He was the pilot and lone occupant of a 10-seat, 2012 Caravan Cessna 208 used in skydiving events, when, on a flight from Sebastian to Palatka Municipal Airport, the plane crashed near Lake Disston. (See the previous article here.)
The plane was originally identified as a 10-seat, 2012 Caravan Cessna 208. Based on its N-number (N40EA), released today, it was a 1985 Cessna 208, owned by Ottawa, Ill.-based Eagle Air Transport, a company with a small fleet of plans that specialize in skydiving events.
A Flagler County Sheriff’s report on the incident places the time when control towers lost contact with the aircraft at 7:45 p.m. Volusia County’s Air One found the plane at 24 minutes after midnight Saturday morning, using heat signatures. “While walking the debris field, the cockpit and passenger compartment of the plane were unidentifiable and apparent that the plane lost control and landed in a cluster of trees,” a sheriff’s report states. “No signs of life were observed, and it was noted that the pilot had no means of ejection.”
Harvey’s is the first plane-crash fatality in Flagler County since Raymond Miller, 77, crashed his experimental plane, a Sonex Waiex, in the marshes of Pellicer Creek in 2014. It had been Miller’s “first solo flight in the experimental amateur-built airplane, which had not been flown for about 6 months,” according to NTSB’s investigation. The plane experienced a total loss of engine power 10 minutes after taking off from Flagler County airport.
The last plane crash in the county took place on Jan. 31, 2022, when a Cessna 195 that ran out of fuel attempted a landing on I-95, clipped a truck, and crashed in the woods, with two people aboard. Their injuries were minor. The NTSB report attributed the crash to “The pilot’s inadequate fuel planning and preflight inspection, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.”
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.
Steve Ward says
RIP Harvey