A SMALL passenger plane crashed into the yard of a family house in the village of Ostrovany on October 1, shocking its owner, Pavlína Červová, 77, out of the prayers she was quietly reciting at the time.
Fortunately for Červová, her fence was the only property that suffered serious damage, the Nový Čas daily wrote.
“I was walking around my yard reciting prayers,” Červová said, still completely in shock an hour after the incident. “I was engrossed in it, so I wasn’t taking in anything around me. Then, suddenly, there was roar and three metres in front of me was a plane, and it was on fire.”
Unfortunately, the pilot was killed upon impact. Two of the town’s residents were injured trying to pull him from the cockpit, and were taken to hospital in Prešov.
The airplane had taken off from an airport in nearby Ražňany, where it had its own hangar.
“This was a so-called experimental category airplane,” Václav Spišák, the head of the Ražňany aviation club, explained to Nový Čas. “It was almost brand new. The owner bought it about six months ago from the U. S. as a kit and assembled it here.”
Spišák said pilots of such planes need a licence, but do not need permission to take off from air traffic control.
The cause of the accident is under investigation, but some of Ostrovany’s residents reported hearing the plane’s engine fail just before the crash.
