Father, son killed in plane crash on way home from baseball game

A father and his 22-year-old son were killed when their small plane apparently flew into a developing storm on their way home from a St. Louis Cardinals game, with investigators saying the aircraft appeared to make a last-minute turn before spiraling down into a rural Illinois tree line.

The pilot, 48, and his son took off from St. Louis Regional Airport in Bethalto late Thursday and were headed to Siloam Springs Municipal Airport in Arkansas when the plane crashed near Waterloo, Illinois, the Monroe County Sheriff's Department in Illinois said in a press release.

The father and son have been identified as Jimmy Don Lewis and Brayden Ty Lewis, the Monroe County Coroner’s Office confirmed to KSDK.

Investigators said the pair had spent the evening at a Cardinals game before starting the flight home in what is believed to have been a Beechcraft Baron 55 private aircraft.

"Investigators believe the aircraft departed into an area of developing severe weather," authorities said. "Flight data indicates the aircraft appeared to begin a turn, possibly in an attempt to avoid the inclement weather, before entering what appeared to be a descending spiral. Radar contact was subsequently lost."

Emergency crews were dispatched around 2:34 a.m. Friday after reports of a possible aircraft crash south of Waterloo. Search efforts were hampered for hours by low clouds, rain and poor visibility, forcing authorities to rely on a massive multi-agency response that included specialized drone teams from Illinois and the St. Louis region.

The Beech Baron 55 is a light twin aircraft with retractable gear that is known to become a handful in extremely turbulent weather. It is an aircraft that is faster, more complex, and can get out of control much more quickly than the V-tailed Beech Bonanza which earned the moniker, V-tailed Doctor Killer long ago. My next-door neighbor has a Bonanza that he loves but hasn’t flown for years after he scared the hell out of himself and his wife on one too many occasions.

I started with hang gliders more than 40 years ago, moved to ultralights, and then to general aviation aircraft. We have lived on a small airport for the last 35 years. And yes, ‘Get Home-itis’ is definitely a real thing that has been a factor in my go/no-go decision-making process many times.

I guess the difference is that my skill level and ability to alter my plans in flight before things have gotten beyond my ability to deal with situations that I have gotten myself into have worked in my favor. Of course, my wife who is almost always with me when flying, is the ultimate arbiter between me and the weather; when she says NO, we turn around.

Of course, the other part of the problem that non-flyers do not seem to realize is that the weather can change incredibly fast and your observation skills and decision-making process have to stay ahead of it especially in a small plane.

But to me the unspoken biggest factor in this situation is that the Beech Baron 55 has a reputation for becoming a handful in bad weather. It is far beyond my skill level. We have been flying the same Piper Cherokee for 35 years and the skill level required is just so much less. And also, most of our flying has been in coastal areas on the West Coast where visibility and mountainous terrain can be problems, but we do not typically have to deal with the killer thunderstorms that can pop up in the Midwest and South.

One time we were flying down the East Side of the mountains on our way to the LA area and one small thunderstorm after another kept popping up in our path. We eventually landed in a place in the middle of nowhere Eastern Oregon called Christmas Valley, there was sage brush blowing across the runway. A light twin landed after us, and all of his radio equipment had been fried after he was hit by lightning. So, he wasn’t going anywhere after landing.

After fueling up we took off again and had continued adventures on our trip. We kept having to divert further and further East until we eventually ended up over part of Utah before being able to turn back to the West and came across the mountains just south of the cumulo-granite known as Lassen Peak. We had a 50mph head wind and some pretty serious turbulence but no actual storm activity. We were very happy to land at Yolo County Airport where they were having a big skydiving festival that day. From there we limped down to our destination, hours behind schedule and latge at might, Santa Paula Airport in Southern California.

The next day we were riding the roller coasters at Magic Mountain which we used to always have season tickets for. But compared to some of the real-life excitement we had experienced the day before the coasters seemed a little less scary.

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