ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604050117
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MILL CREEK
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
TOO MUCH HEADWIND, and too little fuel add up to trouble for a New Jersey high school senior and her parents.
High school senior Christine Long and her parents woke up Thursday morning in Cherry Hill, N.J., thinking they were going to spend a day getting acquainted with the campus at Virginia Tech, one of the colleges on Christine's list of prospects.
About 11:15 a.m., the Longs got a quick introduction to the rolling green terrain of Botetourt County, instead.
That's when the engine of the rented Cessna four-seater Bruce Long was piloting sputtered and died. It was out of gas. Long was left to guide the plane on a helpless descent toward a field between Troutville and Buchanan. He got the wheels on the ground, but at 55 mph on a muddy slope, the nose wheel of the plane sank in and vaulted the plane onto its back.
"Another minute's worth of gas would have been just wonderful," Long chuckled, stretched out on a bed in the emergency room at Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Bruce and Christine Long escaped with cuts and bruises. Barbara Long suffered a broken wrist. They were all wearing seat belts.
"Well, it just adds a little excitement to our lives," Bruce Long said.
The Longs figured to make a one-day trip to Blacksburg and back. It was a beautiful day, Bruce Long had the day off from his job as a business manager for the state of New Jersey, and he and his wife were going to help their sixth child decide on a college.
But as they neared Southwest Virginia, Bruce Long, who has just 150 hours of flight experience, realized he wasn't going to have the gas to reach Blacksburg. He said he was on the radio with the tower at Roanoke Regional Airport to see if he could land there when the engine started coughing.
"I saw the plane come over the valley," said Henry Husaw, a construction worker who was helping build a house near Virginia 641. "When the propeller stopped, it glided over here. It took a nose dive."
By the time Mark Boothe, another construction worker, approached the wreckage, Barbara and Christine Long had already gotten out of the plane. Bruce Long was still inside.
``I said, `Everything is going to be all right,''' said Boothe, who was stocking brick at the construction site when he saw the crash. "I helped the father out of the plane."
Conflicting reports about where the plane went down had firefighters and rescue workers from all over Botetourt County scrambling to find it. John Hinkle, the airport's tower manager, said the plane was about 10 miles northeast of the airport when the tower lost contact with it.
Since small planes often fly on visual rules, and no flight plan was filed, no one at the airport knew where the plane had come from or where it was going.
"We didn't know where we were, either," Bruce Long said. "We knew it wasn't the Roanoke airport." He said rescue workers got to the scene almost right away.
Bruce Long blames his own "stupidity" for the crash.
"We thought we had enough gas, but we hit some headwinds and didn't get the gas mileage I expected."
All in all, he counts himself and his family lucky. "I never panicked," Bruce Long said. "I knew exactly what I was doing." Long, 62, said he followed everything he'd been taught.
Christine Long was smiling in a bed next to her father's. Will she ever fly with dad again?
"No," she laughed. "Sorry. I'm not going to fly at all for a while."
She hasn't crossed Virginia Tech off her list yet, though.
"I think we're going to go ahead and see [the campus] tomorrow," she said. "I mean, we're here."
Staff writers Diane Struzzi and Richard Foster contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. 1. Botetourt County fire and rescueby CNBworkers and Virginia State Police examine the plane crash site
Thursday morning. 2. Crash survivors (from left) Barbara, Christine
and Bruce Long in the emergency room at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
Bruce and Christine Long escaped with cuts and bruises. Barbara Long
suffered a broken wrist. color. Graphic: Map by staff. color.