Plane

Three friends bound for a NASCAR race in Tennessee were killed yesterday when their small plane crashed shortly after takeoff into a patch of woods near a Jacksonville home. Baltimore County police identified the victims as Theodore C. Ryder, 45, who was piloting the aircraft, Paul E. Sorensen, 48, and Timothy H. Conner, 48 - all from Joppa. There were no injuries on the ground, officials said. Officials said the plane, a six-seat Piper Saratoga, took off from Harford County Airport in Churchville at 9:06 a.m. and crashed about nine minutes later.

When you fly far enough or frequently enough, where you sit on the plane can become an obsession. I know. I've taken more than 60 international flights since 1999 and wasted hundreds of hours in airports and on airplanes. That's not exactly time well spent, but it has made me realize that seat selection is one thing an economy-class passenger can control. It can mean the difference between a pleasant experience and a nightmare, especially now that flights are at or near capacity. Nothing beats first or business class, of course.

W. Clark Gaither and his wife were lingering over cups of post-lunch coffee in the kitchen of their Clarksville farmhouse. It was shortly after noon Nov. 23, 1962. For crew and passengers on board United Flight 297, bound from Newark, N.J., to Atlanta, it was just another routine trip on a brilliant late autumn afternoon. Traveling at 10,000 feet, the plane was preparing for a landing at Washington's National Airport, its only stop on its journey to Atlanta. Air traffic controllers at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center and the Washington Approach Control Center radioed reports to Flight 297 that small flocks of large birds had been sighted by other pilots in the area.

A Prince George's County man was seriously injured yesterday when the single-engine plane he was piloting crashed near an airport in New York state, authorities said. Jeremiah Murphy, 68, of Larchmont Road in Laurel was piloting a single-seater 1986 Falcon XP aircraft about 2:30 p.m. when the plane crashed in woods west of the Orange County Airport near Montgomery, located about 60 miles northwest of New York City, said Montgomery Fire Department Chief Bob Reynolds. Murphy's destination and take-off location were not immediately available.

Maj. Gen. Edwin Warfield III -- a retired adjutant general and commander of the Maryland National Guard whose family's military tradition dates to the American Revolution -- died yesterday morning of congestive heart failure at St. Agnes HealthCare. He was 75.General Warfield's military career spanned nearly four decades and included surviving four days on a life raft after the P-51 Mustang warplane he was piloting was shot down over Japan during World War II.In civilian life, he had been board chairman and chief executive of the Daily Record, which was founded by his grandfather, Edwin Warfield, who was governor of Maryland from 1904 to 1908.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- For all that inflation has affected, one price has remained unchanged: the cost of dreaming."You can still do that for free," John Chaney was reminded."

For years, Charles J. Cignatta's "office" was the cockpit of chase planes high over the Chesapeake Bay, where he filmed the dips and rolls of aircraft going through their paces after emerging from the Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River.Mr. Cignatta, who spent a nearly five-decade career with the manufacturer of airplanes and spacecraft, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at Franklin Woods Center-Genesis Eldercare. The Essex resident was 85.Armed with his heavy Speed Graphic or Aeroflex movie camera, Mr. Cignatta photographed Martin Co. projects, from World War II-era bombers and seaplanes to jets and missiles and even the installation of a nuclear power plant at the South Pole.

1934: FBI kills John Dillinger1934: Dionne quintuplets born1935: Will Rogers' plane lost1935: Social Security approved

A federal judge convicted a Maryland man yesterday of assaulting a flight attendant during an "air rage" incident aboard a Baltimore-bound plane, where the man touched off pandemonium when he went berserk after proclaiming himself to be Jesus.Judge Catherine C. Blake also rejected a defense plea that Dean William Trammel, 22, be found not criminally responsible.Trammel's lawyers argued that he suffers from a severe bipolar disorder that caused him to have a mental breakdown."There was some kind of psychotic behavior going on," Blake said in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

Three members of a Bethesda family died when their small plane crashed into a Newark, N.J., neighborhood yesterday, hurling flaming debris across a city block. Twenty-five people on the ground were injured.Itzhak Jacoby, 56, his wife Gail, 50, and their 13-year-old daughter, Atira, were killed, according to Newark police. The Jacobys were returning home by private plane from New York, where they had spent Thanksgiving with an older daughter, Orit.Itzhak Jacoby, a professor at the Bethesda-based Uniformed Services University of Health Services, which trains military doctors, was described by friends as an experienced pilot who had flown for the Israeli air force.

AirTran Airways will unveil a Baltimore Ravens Boeing 717 dubbed Ravens 1 this morning. The plane, which makes its debut at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, is painted purple and black with the Ravens logo on the tail of the plane. The plane will serve cities throughout AirTran's 60 destinations. The Ravens aircraft is the second football-themed plane in the AirTran fleet. It unveiled Falcons 1 two weeks ago, and it will soon introduce Colts 1.

Capt. George Jefferson Price, a retired Pan American World Airways pilot, adventurer and raconteur, packed a lot of living into a life that ended at 96 earlier this month, when he died at a Coral Gables, Fla., nursing home. Price's professional ties to Baltimore were through Pan Am, which he joined in 1942 aboard flying boats and later as a first officer aboard the famed M-130, better known to travelers as the China Clipper, that was built at the Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River.

Brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, anxious to sell an "aeroplane" of their own manufacture, entered into discussions with the Army in 1907. Signal Corps' requirements were rather stringent. The plane was to be spacious enough for two people, maintain a speed of 40 mph with a range of 125 miles, and be capable of remaining aloft for an hour. It was also not to be so technically complicated that training pilots would require an enormous amount of time. Successfully beating out two other bidders, the Wrights received the contract to build the airplane.

While Washington prepares to inject Maryland with billions in new stimulus projects on one hand, it's contemplating turning off a Maryland job machine with another. The clock strikes midnight on March 1 for Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor, a "stealth" jet fighter that has been in development for more than a decade and in production since 2003. President Barack Obama has to decide by then whether to extend Raptor purchases beyond the 183 already built or under contract. A "no" would mean work would start to wind down next year and the last F-22 would roll out of Lockheed's Marietta, Ga., plant in 2011.

After the Jan. 15 ditching of a USAirways jet into the icy Hudson River, I know one thing: We will all be paying much closer attention during the flight safety instructions. You know, that part of the flight when the plane is taxiing to the runway that you usually ignore? I know I do. I fumble with my purse, digging for the iPod and gum. I make sure my reading material is in order. I turn off my cell phone, check my sweater, fasten the seat belt. Pray. Everything except listening to or watching a video of the flight attendant drone on about exits above the wings.

US Airways Flight 1549 out of New York's LaGuardia Airport had been in the air for just 90 seconds when a collision with a flock of birds forced Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger to make a dramatic landing in the Hudson River. Corporate attorney Jim Hanks, 65, a partner in the Baltimore office of Venable LLP, prefers to sit at the front of the plane when he flies. But for the Airbus A320 flight to Charlotte, N.C., the Federal Hill resident found himself in an aisle seat three rows from the back.

Maybe I've been watching too much 24, but it seems that passengers have been getting a bit more pro-active in the air. Or in one case, before the plane even leaves the ground. It's been more than seven years since the tragedy of Sept.11, but the American flier's psyche has forever been altered. We remain alert, subjecting our fellow passengers to a level of scrutiny that has nothing to do with who's hogging the overhead bin. And if necessary, we speak up or get up. Earlier this month on a flight boarding at Reagan National in Washington, a Muslim family from Virginia was removed from the plane after fellow passengers reportedly heard one of their party talking about airplane safety.

WASHINGTON - After helping to deliver the District of Columbia's first baby of the year, Dr. Kashif Irfan boarded a flight to Orlando, Fla., with his wife, his three small children and other relatives. But instead of taking off as scheduled, Irfan and his family were ordered off the plane and detained in the airport, surrounded by armed guards. "I was thinking, 'What could we have possibly done to arouse a degree of suspicion this high?' " said Irfan, a U.S. citizen born in Detroit. The airline's handling of the Irfan family, after comments one of them made about airline safety aroused suspicions of two teenage pasengers, caused an uproar among Muslim Americans yesterday and prompted AirTran Airways to formally apologize to the family and to make amends that the airline had refused a day earlier.

Wilbur J. Mathias, a retired Federal Aviation Administration official and World War II B-24 navigator who later flew in an atomic bomb test in the Pacific, died Dec. 11 of gall bladder cancer at a son's home in The Orchards neighborhood of North Baltimore. He was 87. Mr. Mathias was born and raised in Altoona, Pa., where he graduated from high school. He later moved with his family to Dundalk and graduated from Strayer Business College. In 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where he was trained as a navigator.

On Dec. 9, 1953, an experimental jet plane, a B-57 jet by some reports, carrying a pilot and a co-pilot from the Glenn L. Martin plant at Middle River, exploded in midair about a mile above Bel Air. The wreckage was strewn for miles over the countryside around what is now Churchville Road and the John Carroll School. The plane's burning fuselage was projected over the Homestead property of John D. Worthington and landed in a cornfield on the farm of Dr. M.R. Wagner. One man died and another was seriously injured.