HOULTON, Maine — The pilot found dead after his twin-engine plane crashed early Thursday morning in Houlton under foggy conditions has been identified as 30-year-old Bakary Doucoure of Le Blanc, France.
Doucoure was the sole occupant of the Piper PA34, which had taken off the previous evening from an airport in Goose Bay, Labrador, and was bound for Merritt Island, Fla., Houlton Police Chief Joe McKenna said early Friday evening.
The plane crashed about a mile south of the airport after clipping some trees, ending up in a man-made pond. Doucoure’s body was recovered from the wreckage late Thursday afternoon and was taken to the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta for identification.
“That’s what he did for a living, ferrying aircraft from Europe to flight schools in Florida,” McKenna said. “In this case he was heading to a flight school in Merritt Island, Fla.”
Benjamin Torres, the fixed-base operator at the Houlton airport, said Doucoure regularly passed through Maine on his way south.
“He always came in at odd hours,” Torres said Friday. “He knew some of the regular pilots here in passing to say ‘hi.’ … He’s a really good guy and I am sorry [it happened]. He has time in that craft [and] he is no stranger to aviation, that is for sure.”
On Friday, McKenna said the cause of death had not yet been determined.
Officials with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were at the crash site off White Settlement Road on Friday recovering the plane’s engines from the bottom of the man-made pond. Torres said Friday the location of the engines was determined by observing oil collecting on the surface of the pond. A large steel hook on a chain was used to drag the pond to grab the engines. After pulling the engine to the edge of the pond, a telescoping boom on a truck was used to raise the engines above the surface Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, the Houlton Fire Department drained about half the water from the pond, or more than 100,000 gallons, so officials could recover the plane’s heavily damaged fuselage. All of the wreckage was taken to a hangar at the Houlton airport, where FAA and NTSB officials are attempting to reconstruct the aircraft and determine what happened.
The plane was not equipped with a “black box” recording device, Torres said.
“They will examine [the wreckage] and collect all the data they can,” he said. “Then they will write up their report.”
The plane was due at Houlton International Airport around 1 a.m. Thursday after leaving the airport in Goose Bay, Labrador, at about 9:15 p.m. Wednesday. McKenna on Thursday said officials believe the flight originated in Europe and the pilot was on his way to Florida.
Officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection were at the airport in Houlton to meet the plane as it entered the U.S. and reported that it was an hour overdue, McKenna said.
At 2 a.m., customs officials reported hearing the plane approach the airport on its designated flight path from the south. Soon after, they reported hearing what sounded like the engines failing and a crashing sound.
McKenna said there was “zero visibility” at the time because of fog conditions, and a search was started immediately off the runway.
One neighboring resident, who declined to give his name to the press, said Thursday he heard what sounded like a lawn mower engine struggling to stay running earlier that morning. He stated he did not hear any crashing sounds, so he assumed the engine belonged to an all-terrain vehicle going down the road.
“It wasn’t flying very high for an airplane, because I thought it was something going up the road,” the man said.
According to the website flightaware.com, the pilot’s logged flight plan from Goose Bay to Houlton was 625 miles and he actually flew 640 miles before crashing. The flight plan indicates the plane was owned by Growl Aircraft Inc. of Merritt Island, Florida. Attempts to reach anyone at Growl Aircraft were unsuccessful.
According to the aircraft manufacturer’s website, the Piper PA34 has a range of 828 nautical miles with 45 minutes of reserve fuel. Information on flightware.com indicates the distance between Goose Bay and Houlton is 597 miles.
Parts of the plane were found in the pond while a wing and other debris were found on the ground and in trees surrounding the area.
On Friday, Torres described seeing a few trees snapped off near the tops, and what looked like personal effects, pieces of the aircraft and papers scattered around the area. Officials with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection mopped up spilled aviation fuel and oil, Torres said.
“There is no large impact crater,” he said. “But it looks like an accident scene.”
Houlton Pioneer Times staff writer Joseph Cyr contributed to this report.
