Breckenridge Texan

By Tony Pilkington and Carla McKeown/Breckenridge Texan

Inspectors from the Federal Aviation Administration were at the Stephens County Airport on Friday, July 26, to investigate an incident involving an emergency landing and crash of a small airplane on Thursday.

According to the dispatch report from the Breckenridge Police Department, the call about the crash came in at 6:18 p.m. The pilot, Ricky Lee Lewis of Cisco, was not injured, although there was some damage to the plane, Stephens County Sheriff Kevin Roach said.

This small plane had an engine malfunction shortly after takeoff from the Stephens County Airport on Thursday evening. It skidded off the runway during the emergency landing. (Courtesy Photo)

Roach, along with Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Russell Reid, Constable Wayne McMullen, medics and firefighters responded to the scene. The local officials conducted the preliminary investigation until the FAA was contacted.

“The pilot was the only occupant of the plane; it was a little, small plane,” Roach said. “And he told us he was trying to take off; he got up in the air, folded his landing gear up. He experienced some sort of malfunction, so he immediately landed the plane. But he had failed to re-engage his landing gear, so the plane skidded on its belly down the runway and then off into the grass at the end of the runway.”

Roach said Lewis estimated that he was between 50 to 100 feet off the ground when the problem with the plane happened.

The only damage was to the plane and some minor damage to the runway, the sheriff said. Stephens County Judge Michael Roach said the pilot took off from runway 1331 and, when the malfunction occurred, he landed the plane in the middle of the main runway, going across it and into the pasture on airport property.

Although the fire department was dispatched to the scene as a precaution, there wasn’t a fire, the sheriff said.

“The pilot said he had just fueled up, so both tanks were fueled. But after the plane came to stop, one of the people that was first on scene helped him get all the switches and stuff turned off, turn the fuel pumps off and all that, so there was never a fire danger,” Kevin Roach said.

Roach said Lewis turned over his logbooks on Thursday evening at the request of the FAA and that the incident is still under investigation.

Inspectors from the FAA were at the Stephens County Airport on Friday to investigate the emergency/crash landing of a small airplane on Thursday evening. (Courtesy Photo)

Cutline, top photo: Investigators were at the Stephens County Airport on Friday afternoon regarding a plane that skidded off the runway during an emergency landing on Thursday. In the top picture, the plane can be seen in the grass to the right of the runway. (Courtesy Photo)