Plane crash mystery 8/01/22 Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:00)
This morning, so many questions after this small, twin engine turboprop plane made an emergency landing, tilted on its wing after losing its right wheel and somehow one of its pilots.

Pilot: (00:12)
Emergency. We’ve lost our right wheel. We’d like to proceed to Raleigh and make a landing at Raleigh.

Speaker 1: (00:17)
That’s pilot number one, who survived, heard talking with air traffic control minutes before the delicate landing at Raleigh-Durham International.

Pilot: (00:25)
We were attempting to land. We made contact with the ground, had a hard landing and decided to go around, and at that point we lost the wheel.

Speaker 1: (00:33)
He referenced “we” meaning at one point there were two pilots on board.

Air Traffic Controller: (00:45)
And quick question, how do you intend to land at Raleigh-Durham?

Pilot: (00:45)
Flaps 100, get as slow as we can, and I guess we’re going to put it on the belly.

Speaker 1: (00:46)
But somehow before the landing, investigators say the second pilot, identified as 23-year-old Charles Hugh Crooks either jumped or fell from the plane in mid-air without a parachute, landing in a backyard 20 miles away, a thud heard on a homeowner’s surveillance camera.

Darshan Patel: (01:05)
We had officers that were responding in the area for the search and were flagged down by a resident. They had heard something in their backyard, which led to us finding this individual.

Speaker 1: (01:15)
Neighbors left wondering how and why the second pilot left that plane.

Matt Stone: (01:19)
I guess I don’t know if we’ll ever really know, but it’s just crazy. If he jumped a second earlier, he could have been right here on my kid’s play set. I mean, just a million things. And the sadness about it, of it being a 23-year-old guy who probably woke up that day, had breakfast and was ready to go fly a plane.

Speaker 1: (01:34)
Investigators are now questioning the surviving pilot who suffered only minor injuries. As for the young co-pilot, his parents say he loved flying and always wanted to be a professional pilot.

George Stephanopoulos: (01:46)
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