A Mooney M-20 aircraft registered as N201RF for Mfc Corp. crashed , and got stuck in the powerlines & tower , suspended about 100 feet in the air in Gaithersburg , Maryland, Montgomery on 27th December Evening.
The pilot and passenger , trapped in the 1977 built small plane for several hours at a height of 30 meters were rescued by Montgomery County Fire and Rescue team. Both the occupants have been transfered to the hospital with serious injuries.
FAA said that this is a single-engine Mooney plane that took off from Westchester County Airport in New York. The agency will investigate the incident along with the National Transportation Safety Board.
The rescue operation began at 5:30 p.m. when crews responded to reports of a small plane that had crashed into power lines, according to Pete Pieringer, chief fire and rescue official for Montgomery County, Maryland.
The Maryland State Police identified the pilot as 65-year-old Patrick Merkle from Washington, DC. The passenger is Ian Williams, 66, from Louisiana, state police said in a press release.
The fire department was in contact with the pilot and passenger during the rescue, and nearby roads were closed, officials said. The crash site is located about four miles northwest of Montgomery County Airport, according to state police.
Some 120,000 households were left without power on the Sunday evening following the outage, but that number dropped to less than 1,000 early Monday morning.
Schools and College campuses in Montgomery County will be closed Monday due to massive power outages, district officials said Sunday night.
The district previously said more than 40 schools in the Montgomery County Public School System and six central offices were left without power, impacting services such as maintenance, buses and food service.
