CLEARED TO LAND... ON THE PRACTICE RANGE

By Torleif Sorenson on 2/17/15

We are wondering if the western United States is turning into some weird wide-area golf course version of the Bermuda Triangle.

The plane crash above occurred on Saturday, February 14, the day before another emergency landing on Sunday at Skywest GC in Hayward, California.

On Saturday, a 1974 Cessna 150M two-seat, piston single-engine aircraft crashed on the practice range at Valley View GC in Layton, Utah. The aircraft is owned by Bountiful Flight, a pilot training school based at Skypark Airport in Woods Cross, Utah. Both the pilot and passenger survived.

The owner of Bountiful Flight, certified flight instructor Jason Clark, told KSTU-DT that the pilot had not been trained by his school and had only rented the aircraft. Clark also opined that the crash was not a result of a mechanical problem, saying it was "most likely pilot error" and/or the aircraft running out of fuel.

Alex Cabrero of KSL-DT said that the engine had stopped working, and a witness who was hiking near Weber Canyon told emergency crews that he heard the plane "sputtering." Cabrero also reports that witnesses at Valley View GC heard nothing until the aircraft clipped some trees near the practice range, just before the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board will have the final say on the actual cause of the crash.

Doug Bitton of the Layton Fire Department told reporters that the aircraft had left Skypark Airport (a.k.a. Woods Cross Airport) for Logan, Utah earlier that day and was en route back to Skypark when the crash occurred.

Saturdays are normally busy anyway for Valley View's chief teaching professional, Dustin Volk, PGA. But for him, this almost certainly takes the cake:

"It could have been really bad. One customer said just five minutes earlier, he was in the bunker hitting shots out to the chipping green."

We know that golfers usually like soft landings on the greens, but...


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