NEWPORT — A pilot was injured in a plane crash Sunday afternoon at the Newport airport.
The crash happened shortly after 1 p.m. at Parlin Field Airport, according to a news release from the Newport Police Department. An off-duty Newport police dispatcher witnessed the crash and responded immediately, Chief Alex Lee said Monday morning in a phone interview.
“A firefighter assisted him in getting the pilot out,” Lee said, and police and firefighters arrived minutes after the crash was reported. The pilot was the only person on the aircraft.
The pilot, who officials declined to identify at this stage of the investigation, had “serious but non-life-threatening injuries,” according to the release. First responders called in DHART and he was transferred to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.
“There was no fire. There was no damage to the runway,” Lee said, and the crash is not considered suspicious. “The plane went into a wooded area off the end of the runway.”
The Federal Aviation Administration, along with New Hampshire’s Bureau of Aeronautics, is overseeing the investigation, airport manager Heath Marsden said Monday morning in a phone interview. Officials from both departments were on the scene Monday. One of the airport’s two runways will remain closed during the investigation.
Pralin Field, located off North Main Street, which is also Route 10, has two runways: a paved runway that is nearly 4,000 feet long and a grass runway that is around 2,000 feet long, Marsden said. The pilot, who was flying a privately owned Ryan Navion plane, took off from the Keene Dillant-Hopkins Airport, and approached the grassy runway from east to west.
“That aircraft has landed on that runway before and it’s normally the smaller airplanes that would land on there,” Marsden said. “It was sunny, warm, wind was really calm.”
Around 10 aircraft visited the airport last weekend, which is typical, he said. The airport has about 4,000 takeoffs and landings each year — mainly recreational aircraft, along with charter planes and those used for business.
“Most of them are single-engine pistons with usually two to four seats,” Marsden said.
In his roughly 14 years at the airport, Marsden said he could recall only one other accident, which took place around a decade ago.
