Pilot

A 26-year-old Naval Academy graduate from Howard County who realized a long-held dream of becoming a Naval aviator was killed when the jet she was piloting crashed into a field outside Spokane, Wash. Lt. j.g. Valerie Cappelaere Delaney and her two crew members died Monday morning when the EA-6B Prowler crashed during training, the Navy said Tuesday. The incident remains under investigation. Friends and family described Cappelaere Delaney as a focused, athletic and caring young woman whose career was shaped by conversations with her grandfather, a retired Air Force pilot.

Herbert B. Groh, whose life as a mariner spanned the gamut from running errands on the city docks of the 1930s to work as a harbor pilot and tugboat captain, and who helped rescue and rehabilitate the Liberty ship-turned-floating-museum John W. Brown, died June 6 after a heart attack at the Catonsville Commons nursing home. He was 92. "I think he was one of a kind, or at least one of a very few," said Michael J. Schneider, a past chairman of the Project Liberty Ship project that guided the restoration of the John W. Brown.

- Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger has flown his final flight. The pilot who landed a US Airways plane safely on the Hudson River last January said Wednesday he is retiring after 30 years and plans to spend some of his time pressing for more flight safety. "My message going forward is that I want to remind everyone in the aviation industry - especially those who manage aviation companies and those who regulate aviation - that we owe it to our passengers to keep learning how to do it better," he said at a news conference shortly after his last flight landed at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

Fifi is no shrinking violet. The 68-year-old warplane can't sky like it used to, and getting all the parts going in the morning takes a little more thought and planning. But Fifi - the last B-29 Superfortress still in the air - commands respect, with super-charged engines that growl with authority and menacing gun turrets that appear ready to fend off swarming enemy fighters. The plane did, after all, have more than a bit part in "The Right Stuff," standing in as the mother ship for test pilot Chuck Yeager's first supersonic flight.

Carroll County Public Library announced this week that the Westminster Library branch, 50 E. Main St., Westminster, is beginning Sunday operations, starting Oct. 7. The library will be open 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays through April 28 (closed December 23 and March 31). Library officials said the Sunday hours are a pilot project, made possible in partnership with the City of Westminster. Other hours at Westminster are Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 8:45 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.    

A pilot on his way home to Maine made an emergency landing in a Maryland field when his small plane ran out of gas. The Frederick News-Post reported that the man made an emergency landing Sunday afternoon in Frederick. No one was injured. A neighbor whose husband talked to the pilot told the paper the man was trying to land at Frederick Municipal Airport when he was told to circle until the runway was available. He said he ran out of gas in the tank he was using and didn't have time to switch to another.

State police identified the pilot who was found dead at the scene of a plane crash in Edgewater on Saturday as 53-year-old Joseph Luther Kelly III of Annapolis. Firefighters arrived at 24 Warehouse Creek Lane to find the wreckage of the single-engine 1962 V-35 Beechcraft Bonanza Model P engulfed in flames fewer than 30 feet from a house in what a police spokesman described as a sparsely populated neighborhood. The National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Maryland State Police are investigating.

A pilot working for an Eastern Shore company that flies advertising banners over Ocean City beaches each summer was killed Thursday after his plane crashed on a golf course in Worcester County, according to Maryland State Police. The pilot, identified by police as Garett Colona, 23, of the 5000 block of Sharptown Road in Rhodesdale, was a "super guy" beloved by all the company's other pilots, said Bob Bunting, owner of plane operator Ocean Aerial Ads Thursday afternoon. "This was one of the nicest individuals I've ever known in my life," Bunting said.

The U.S. Air Force sent two F-16 jet fighters to intercept a civilian plane that had strayed into restricted air space over Washington, D.C., at about 8:30 p.m. Monday. The military planes, based at Andrews Air Force Base, escorted the smaller craft until the pilot landed at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The Federal Aviation Administration was unable to communicate with the pilot, the sole occupant of the Beechcraft 58 aircraft, a small, twin-engine plane.

The news last week that the pilot for an HBO political satire starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus would be filmed in Baltimore starting next month was mainly treated as a local production story here. That's the way I wrote the piece online that broke the news of the filming, and that is probably as it should be. In a tough economy, the Maryland Film Office estimates that production of the pilot for a series about a woman vice president of the United States could have an economic impact in excess of $6 million and could create more than 700 jobs for Maryland crew and actors while "prepping and filming" in the state.

For Theresa Mills, the "most emotional day" came last June when the Marine Corps notification team visited her Laurel home to tell her that her older son had been killed in Afghanistan. The second most emotional day, she said, came Monday. In the morning, Mills traveled to Timonium, where Lance Cpl. Eugene C. Mills III was one of seven Marylanders honored at the annual Memorial Day observance at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens. In the afternoon, she planned to see off her younger son, Jake, who was scheduled to leave Monday evening for Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, S.C. In between, she said she was "emotional, very emotional.

Gov. Martin O' Malley has ordered the U.S. and Maryland flags at state facilities flown at half-staff on Monday to honor Army Capt. Sara M. Knutson, a helicopter pilot from Eldersburg who died last month in Afghanistan. Knutson, 27, was one of five soldiers killed March 11 in the crash of a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during training near Kandahar, the Pentagon said. A 2003 graduate of Liberty High School and a 2007 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Knutson is the only Marylander to die in Afghanistan this year.

The Maryland Department of Human Resources will step up efforts to find people who sell their food stamps for cash or otherwise defraud the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, under a pilot program with the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday. The agencies will sign enhanced data sharing agreements to monitor the more than 754,000 Marylanders who receive food stamps and the nearly 3,800 retailers that accept the benefits. Virginia will also participate in the initiative, which will gradually expand to other states over time.

Law enforcement officials are watching a test program in Anne Arundel County that entices people with open criminal warrants to turn themselves in — so they can get their state tax refunds. Thus far, the results of dangling a refund as bait have stunned the sheriff who pitched the one-year pilot project. "If I had gotten 10, that would be good, too. But 134? That's huge," said Sheriff Ron Bateman. "It's baseball season, and this is a grand slam. " Under the measure adopted last year, and which went into practical effect with the current tax season, the comptroller's office blocks Maryland tax refunds of residents of Anne Arundel County, and others, who have unserved warrants in Anne Arundel.

Ernest T. Davis, a retired construction project manager and a World War II B-24 pilot, died Feb. 13 of heart failure at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. He was 92. The son of a civil engineer and a government worker, Ernest Theodore Davis was born in Bemis, Tenn., and later moved with his family to Washington. He was a graduate of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and started engineering studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1942, he enlisted in what was then the Army Air Corps, and after completing training as a B-24 Liberator pilot, was assigned to the 8th Air Force in England.

A 26-year-old Naval Academy graduate from Howard County who realized a long-held dream of becoming a Naval aviator was killed when the jet she was piloting crashed into a field outside Spokane, Wash. Lt. j.g. Valerie Cappelaere Delaney and her two crew members died Monday morning when the EA-6B Prowler crashed during training, the Navy said Tuesday. The incident remains under investigation. Friends and family described Cappelaere Delaney as a focused, athletic and caring young woman whose career was shaped by conversations with her grandfather, a retired Air Force pilot.

This week's apparent mental breakdown by a Jet Blue pilot could have had a very different ending. Imagine that the ill pilot had pulled the gun that many pilots now carry and started a gunfight in the cockpit. The law that allows pilots to bring arms onto planes was enacted following the9/11tragedy. But over the years, we watched time and again as brave passengers have dealt with safety threats directly without the need of armed force. Within recent weeks we've witnessed graphic on-board meltdowns by a flight attendant and now a pilot.

An American Airlines pilot from the Annapolis area might have violated company policy when he invited passengers to participate in a discussion of Christianity during a flight last week, an airline spokesman said yesterday. During Flight 34 from Los Angeles to New York on Friday, Capt. Rodger K. Findiesen, who lives near Annapolis, asked Christians on board to raise their hands, according to Tim Wagner, an airline spokesman. He then suggested they discuss the faith with other passengers during the 4 1/2 -hour flight, Wagner said.

Dr. Don-Neil Brotman, a retired Baltimore dentist and a pilot, died Feb. 16 of heart failure at Sinai Hospital. The longtime Pikesville resident was 80. Born and raised in Baltimore, Dr. Brotman was a 1949 graduate of City College, and after attending the University of Maryland, College Park, he entered the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, where he earned his dental degree in 1955. He served in the Army Dental Corps from 1955 to 1957 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he attained the rank of captain.