Pilot killed in Plano crash identified as 87-year-old Arizona man

By Sasha Richie

A small private plane crashed in Plano on Tuesday evening, killing the pilot, the only person in the plane, and setting a nearby car on fire. Authorities received reports of the crash around 6 p.m.

Wednesday afternoon the Texas Department of Public Safety identified Elzie Monroe McDonald as the pilot, according to Plano police. McDonald was just days from turning 88. The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the crash.

The pilot was attempting a go-around, an aborted landing attempt in which a plane on final approach instead flies back up, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s incident report, released Wednesday morning. Go-arounds can be requested by air traffic control or initiated by the pilot for a variety of reasons, including mechanical issues and runway obstructions.

Witnesses described hearing a loud boom and seeing the plane’s right wing dip before it crashed.

The plane crashed less than a mile from Air Park-Dallas Airport, a small airstrip in Addison Airport’s air space without an air traffic control tower. The surface of the airport’s short 3,080-foot runway is in poor condition, according to the FAA’s airport database.

The plane that crashed had tail number N1204X. According to Fight Radar 24, a live air traffic tracker available online, the plane had a scheduled flight out of the Addison Airport, about 4 miles south of the site of the crash, at 5:45 p.m.

The plane was a 1963 Mooney M20C, a four-seater, fixed-wing, single-engine plane. According to the FAA’s aircraft database, the plane is registered to McDonald at a P.O. box in Aguila, Ariz.

According to a Nov. 14 article in The Wickenburg Sun, which covers Maricopa County including Aguila, Ariz., McDonald is the previous recipient of the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, which honors individuals with over 50 years of safe piloting or aircraft operation experience.

This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.