From “Aviation International News”:
Don Wylie, Pioneer Upset Recovery Instructor, Killed in T-34 Crash
Don Wylie, the 64-year-old founder and president of both Aviation Safety
Training and Texas Air Aces, and his passenger, 39-year-old Airborne
Express pilot William Eisenhauer, died yesterday morning when their
Beech T-34 reportedly lost its right wing during upset recovery training
in VMC near Conroe, Texas. AST’s Rick Gillenwaters told “AIN Alerts”
today that, contrary to earlier reports, there was no collision with
another AST T-34 that was accompanying Wylie’s airplane. Witnesses in
that airplane, which returned safely to base, said they saw the right
wing of Wylie’s airplane fail cleanly at the root, according to
Gillenwaters.
The airplane, N44KK, was the same T-34 in which “AIN” contributor Rob
Mark flew with Wylie in the course of preparing the article on upset
training that appears in the current issue of “AIN”. A 1999 crash in
Georgia in which a wing separated from a T-34 during simulated combat
was attributed to stress-related cracks in the wing spar, according to
the NTSB, a weakness that led to the grounding of T-34s used for such
flying pending modifications. Gillenwaters said that N44KK was one of
the AST airplanes that had not yet been modified with strengthened wing
spars, but it had been inspected and deemed fit for upset recovery
training pending modifications, which had been scheduled to be
incorporated in 60 days or so. Texas Air Aces conducts simulated combat
flights. Aviation Safety Training teaches experienced private,
corporate, and airline pilots how to recover from aircraft upsets.
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