The man who crashed a small aircraft in a Lawrenceville neighborhood Monday was an experienced pilot who steered the plunging plane so that he -- rather than his son -- took the brunt of the impact, a close friend told the AJC on Wednesday.
Authorities have not released the identity of the man who died, but Robert Watson of Dawsonville, the owner of the aircraft, said his friend Mell Hall, 67, of Lawrenceville, was piloting the plane that day and was the lone fatality.
Three passengers survived, and Watson said one of them was Josh Hall, his friend's son. Watson, 60, said he spoke with Josh Hall at the hospital immediately after the crash and that the young man explained what happened.
He told Watson this his father tilted the aircraft as it neared the ground so that the left side of the fuselage, where his father was seated, hit a tree blocking their flight path.
"Knowing Mell Hall, his son sitting there beside him, I believe with all my heart he took the brunt of it, and knew what he was doing," Watson said.
Josh Hall and two other passengers were taken to Gwinnett Medical Center, and Hall was later transferred to Grady Memorial Hospital for burn treatment. Grady said Tuesday that Josh Hall had been released. Watson said Hall suffered burns and cuts on his face and was recuperating at home, but said he did not know the status of the other two passengers, whose identities have not been released.
Watson said he'd known Mell Hall for nearly two decades. They met when Watson was in the market for a Beechcraft Queen Air. Hall was a broker specializing in the sale of those planes. Watson said he got a better deal elsewhere, but that he and Hall became close friends anyway. Watson said he could no longer fly for health reasons and had turned his Beechcraft over to Hall to sell it. He said he immediately recognized it as his own when he saw it burning on a television news broadcast Monday. He hoped his friend had survived, but a relative of Mell Hall soon called him with the grim news.
"I thought it was a nightmare, but I woke up the next morning and it was still true," he said. Watson said he takes some comfort in the way Josh Hall told him his father died: instantly upon impact.
Witnesses told the AJC on Monday that they saw the last man in the aircraft struggling to get out as flames engulfed it, but Watson said Josh Hall told him that his father was already "slumped over" by the time he and the other two men escaped the cabin.
Watson and friends of Mell Hall said he was a veteran pilot whom they'd never seen make a mistake or cut a corner on safety.
Dana Gregory lives on Barbour Island off the Georgia coast, next to a cabin that Mell Hall built. The island is only accessible by plane or boat, and Mell Hall used to fly there frequently. Gregory said she was with him once when he landed on the island with only moonlight to guide him. She said she always checked the weather before flying with other pilots, but not with Mell Hall.
"I felt he was invincible," she said.
Another friend, Frank Turner of Braselton, was landing his plane at Gwinnett County's Briscoe Field at the same time that Mell Hall was taking off. He said he heard Josh Hall come onto the radio to declare a "dead stick" emergency, meaning that both of the aircraft's propeller engines had ceased spinning.
Turner, who also owns a Beechcraft Queen Air, said the engines have separate fuel pumps and redundant systems and that the likely cause of a double-engine failure is a problem with the fuel. He said he was puzzled because he'd always seen Mell Hall follow the standard protocol of inspecting the fuel to ensure it's the right kind and that it is clean.
"It could have been contaminated fuel," Turner said. "It could have been the wrong fuel. Who knows? I guarantee when the FAA comes back with the cause, it'll be a fuel problem."
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