Windsor Flying Club 172 down in Nashville.

[pelmet]

I celebrate all the future victims that won't be.

That offends some people who worry more about criminals rights.

[Snowy]

NTSB Preliminary report has been posted...

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief ... 3001&key=1

[Beefitarian]

That does nothing to make me happy about the guy's demise. Looks like I'm going to have to call shenanigans though.

[midwingcrisis]

The story keeps going....

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20131 ... 2275/RSS05

[DanWEC]

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2013/11/21 ... -security/

I've said before, this guy was just bad news.
Turned off his transponder over 2 hours before crashing, this "pilot" obviously wanted to be covert. Oh, and as a 45 year old career criminal most recently charged with distributing child porn, listed Taylor Swift as his next of kin?? Creep.
A death is always a tragedy, but I'm far from shedding a tear to the loss of a fellow "pilot" who essentially stole my home club's aircraft for a criminal purpose, endangering the lives of others in the process trying to fly cloaked.

[RatherBeFlying]

The possibilities encompass:

• Smuggling something to the US, but we have not heard of any illegal substances found in the wreck. Doubtful any associates would brave the flames to remove a load.
• Smuggling something/somebody to Canada; he'd have to get gas for the trip back
• Disappearing into the US, but how do you hide a 172?

[170 to xray]

Well, I'm guessing that the abandoned airport just north of KBNA was a factor.

N36.189672, W86.700371 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Fort_Airpark.

Perhaps the wx went down and he was forced to try the ils in KBNA as a last resort. IF he was doing something illegal...if

[Gravy]

taylor swift as next of kin? i guess they didnt realise he was trouble when he walked in

[pdw]

Perhaps the wx went down and he was forced to try the ils in KBNA as a last resort.

Well yes that's exactly it, since everywhere was fogged in heavily down there after midnight; and it may have been an entirely unforseen event, at least in that the widespread fog wasn't likely counted upon.

The landing problem/time is suggested to have been after the time when the nightly runways sweeps were being made for one hour at/after 2AM (news article quoting airport maintenance/management), since no sign of an accident then according to the sweepers .. although they were also working in fog.

[bizjets101]

Jan 22 2014 Autopsy reveals .081 alcohol level . . .

Click Here. from USA Today.

The report concludes that 45-year-old Michael Callan of Windsor, Ontario, died from multiple blunt force and thermal injuries. The report states that his blood alcohol level was .081, just over Tennessee's limit of .08.

[DanWEC]

Wow. Just wow.

[photofly]

Then either he was drinking alcohol during the flight, or he was totally sozzled when he took off earlier in the evening.

[vrrotate]

Pelee Island in Lake Michigan? How many other "facts" has this article gotten wrong?

[pelmet]

I just find it offensive to celebrate a death as a positive on an aviation forum. I guess if this makes me "dishonourable"? So be it.

Once again, I am celebrating his death as positive. Just like radicalized muslim deaths. I find it offensive that a lot of folks are willing to unleash these people on our society because of their supposed rights.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... -tennessee


The bizarre story of a Canadian bank robber, Taylor Swift and a mysterious plane crash in Tennessee

At about 3 a.m., on Oct. 29, 2013, Ryan Dent, an employee at the Nashville International Airport, heard what sounded like the coughing chug of a small plane overhead. It was a mild Tennessee night in fall, about 12 C with no wind, but it was foggy. And no one who was there — the night a long, dark story came to a very strange end — could see beyond a few hundred feet.

On the ground, Dent heard the engine speed up then stop suddenly with four concussive whompfs, like the sound of a truck misfiring, according to a statement he later gave investigators. Alerted by the noise, he walked to a nearby fence and peered through the mist. He couldn’t see anything — no flames, no firefighters rushing from the terminal nearby — so he went back to work.

It would be another five hours before anyone noticed anything amiss. At about 8:50 that morning, a crew member on an airplane taxiing for departure spotted what looked like a piece of engine cowling on a runway. When a team went to investigate, they found not just an engine, but an entire plane, busted up and burned out, the pieces scattered over hundreds of metres of runway and grass.

Inside the cockpit, the investigators found a single body, blackened and fractured beyond recognition, debris embedded in its flesh.

The accident attracted significant attention in Tennessee. A phantom plane had crashed at a major airport, after all, and no one noticed for several hours. The mystery only deepened when investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) arrived. They identified the plane as Canadian. It had slipped over the border unnoticed the night before. And the pilot, well, that’s when things got really weird.

His name was Michael Callan, his fingerprints confirmed. He was a member of the Windsor Flying Club, in Windsor, Ontario. And he was perhaps the most famous bank robber in Windsor history.

But that wasn’t the strange part. Among the documents investigators gathered was Callan’s application to join the flying club. It included his address — at a kind of flophouse near downtown Windsor — his occupation: unemployed, and right at the bottom, as emergency contact, in big block capitals, a single, unexpected, name: TAYLOR SWIFT.

****

Two days after the crash, on Oct. 31, the Windsor Star ran a story identifying Callan as the dead pilot. Murray Landerkin, a retired bank manager, read the paper that day in his living room in a neat brick house not far from the Windsor airport. When he came to Callan’s name, he said recently, the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

In 1997, Landerkin had been the manager of two local CIBC branches. On Dec. 5 of that year he was in the smaller location, running an employee seminar on bank robbery. After the meeting, Landerkin lingered in the back for a minute. That’s when he heard it. “I’ll shoot somebody. Don’t press the f—- alarms. I want your money.”

At first, Landerkin thought it was a practical joke, an employee riffing on the seminar. But when he walked out front, he saw a masked man with a gun, yelling at his staff. The stickup man was tall and slim, with an athletic build. He wore a brown leather jacket and dark jeans. He had a laser sight on his pistol. When Landerkin stepped into view, the man pointed it at his chest. The red dot settled near his heart.

That holdup was one in a series, all involving a lone gunman, a stolen car and unusual cruelty. Gary Nikota spent 30 years as a Crown attorney in Windsor. He prosecuted hundreds, maybe thousands of criminal cases. But to him, those robberies still stand out for the “remarkable, gratuitous violence” of the thief.

In at least five robberies — although police believe there were several more — the stickup man barged into bank branches, pistol in hand. He taunted staff. He threatened death. He kicked and punched a female teller in the back. In one holdup, he kept his laser site on a pregnant employee’s belly while he marched her into the safe. “I mean, you don’t rob a bank and not inflict some terror on people,” Nikota said. “But this went way beyond that in terms of nastiness.”

The robbery spree lasted about about 11 months. What stopped the man in the end “was kind of comical,” Nikota said. On a single day in November 1997, he held up two banks, including, for a second time, Landerkin’s CIBC. For his getaway car that day, he chose a brand new Chrysler Intrepid stolen from a lot outside Toronto. It was the kind of ride that stood out in a car town like Windsor. So when the robber dumped it at the airport, it didn’t take police long to track it down.

Roger Francis was working the front desk at the Windsor Flying Club, on the airport grounds, that day. He remembers seeing a tall, athletic man enter the building, stroll into the bathroom and come out wearing different clothes. The man sat in the lobby for about half an hour then left.

Another club employee, a longtime flight instructor named Karl Klinck, identified the man to police as Michael Callan, a former club member and aspiring pilot. That tip proved crucial. Four days after Klinck fingered him, police arrested Callan in the lunch line at the local Salvation Army.

Callan’s stickup spree was over.

In the months after the crash, NTSB investigators pieced together what they could about the accident. They found nothing wrong with the plane, at least those parts of it that survived the fire. So they turned to Callan himself. Why was he in the United States, and why Tennessee?

The investigators thought they found something close to an answer in Callan’s Canadian parole records. According to an NTSB report, during a mental health review in 2012, Callan said he’d developed a “significant interest” in a celebrity who lived at that time in Nashville. He had written her several letters that had, according to the evaluator, “the flavour of stalking.” The NTSB report didn’t name the celebrity in question. But most assumed, based on Callan’s flight club application, that it was Taylor Swift.

That’s certainly possible. Court records reveal Callan was obsessed with Swift for several years. But she wasn’t the only one.

****

After Callan’s arrest in 1997, a reporter from the Windsor Star went to his mother’s house. She appeared relieved when she heard the news of his capture. “Did he hurt anyone?” she asked. No, the reporter replied. “Thank God,” she said.

Callan was born on July 26, 1968. He was the fourth child and second son in a stable, middle-class home. His mother, Elizabeth Callan, was devoutly religious. But she told the Star she was too easy on Michael growing up. “We were tough with all three of them, except for him,” she said.

Childhood photos show Callan as a blond, big-eyed baby with a narrow face who grew into a slim, muscular young man. He fished and played baseball. He lifted weights. His mother told the Star he was her sweetest child.

At some point all that changed.

According to yearbook records, Callan spent at least three years at Windsor’s W.D. Lowe, a technical high school. After high school, he graduated from the Canadian Aviation Institute, but to his dismay, Elizabeth Callan told the Star, an Air Force training program turned him down.

For a few months in his twenties, Callan worked as a bouncer at Silvers, a strip club in Windsor. The owner there still remembers him as “a clean guy” who “never looked like a bum.” But reports from his trial reveal he was mostly unemployed in those years.

Callan lived with a girlfriend for a time and rotated between being broke and having large wads of cash. He also lived with his mother for several years, but she eventually asked him to leave. According to stories from his trial, she found bullets in their home.

Police believe Callan robbed his first bank in 1994, when he was 26 years old. They never charged him with that crime. Instead, he went to trial in late 1998 for the five robberies beginning and ending with Murray Landerkin’s CIBC.

Callan’s trial lasted several weeks, but the jury took less than two hours to find him guilty on every charge. The judge sentenced Callan to 12 years in prison, plus the two he had already served.

For Nikota, that was largely the end of the case. He expected to see Callan out on parole before long. But as the years went by, Callan stayed inside. In fact, he served almost his entire sentence in custody, which is exceptionally rare in the Canadian system.

Callan’s parole records reveal the reasons why. From the day he entered the prison system, Callan was a terrible inmate, racist and abusive and increasingly bizarre. In one prison, he wrote a guard a vulgar letter. He arranged to be naked and masturbating whenever others, always female, would appear at his cell.

He also became obsessed with several celebrities. At a parole hearing just before his final release in the spring of 2011, the board learned he’d been writing letters to a teenaged actress. He signed them not “Michael Callan” but “Leo Piloto Leon” — a new name he had adopted.

The object of Callan’s obsession goes unnamed in those documents. She might have remained unknown to the public, except for this: Before Callan could be released, the police in Windsor applied for what’s known as a Section 10.2 peace bond. They wanted conditions placed on his release. At the hearing for that bond, Callan, representing himself, spoke of Swift, telling the court he wrote her a “stack of letters” over two years. But he also said that, by 2011, he had moved on. He had a new fantasy, about a new star, one even younger than Swift.

Her name was Miranda Taylor Cosgrove, always stating her full name. The star of the Disney show iCarly, Cosgrove was 17 when Callan started writing to her. He raved about her virginity in the letters. He drew her pictures. He told her he wanted to get married. He even offered her power of attorney over his finances.

“I admit being obsessed with you and only you,” he wrote in one letter read aloud in court. “I think it’s pretty obvious how I feel,” he later testified. “Now it’s just a question of how she feels.”

Right before Callan was scheduled for release, Windsor police warned Cosgrove’s parents about him, leading them to beef up her security at an event in Memphis, Tenn.

After the hearing, a provincial judge imposed a raft of conditions on Callan’s release, including a curfew and a broad a no-contact list that included Cosgrove, but not Swift.

Days later, Callan walked out of the Windsor jail, a free man for the first time in almost 14 years. He had taken no training inside. He had almost no employable skills. He was 42 years old. He had robbed at least five banks and he was in love with a teenage celebrity. So, naturally, he tried to become a pilot.

In December, 2011, when he’d been out of jail for all of six months, Callan was arrested at a Chapters bookstore after a patron saw him masturbating to what looked like child pornography on his laptop. Once in custody, police identified Callan in another porn-related incident. He spent several more months in jail.

For all his problems, Callan did manage to complete his pilot’s training once outside. By 2012, he was a member in good standing at the Windsor Flying Club. It’s not clear, even today, why the club let him back in. He was a convicted bank robber, public exhibitionist and obsessed with teenage celebrities.

But none of that apparently bothered the club brass. “The board discussed it and said ‘Well, who are we to judge?'” Dave Gillies, the club president in 2013, told the Windsor Star after the crash.

No board members would speak on the record for this story. Multiple calls and emails went unreturned.

Callan had no job and little money, but he paid his dues at the club and managed to scrounge up enough money to rent planes on a regular basis. In 2013, he used one to carry out his final, doomed flight.

****

On Oct. 28 Callan booked a Cessna 172R for an overnight trip to Pelee Island, in nearby Lake Erie. In an email to the NTSB, a club manager said an employee heard him taking off at about 6 p.m. Callan closed his flight plan, indicating arrival, about two and a half hours later.

The next sign anyone had of Callan was around 2 a.m. at the Nashville airport. Duong Lam told investigators he thought the plane was coming from the east. It passed over Hangar 14, where Lam was working. He looked into the sky, but the fog was too thick, he wrote in a statement. He couldn’t see anything in the air.

Radar records would later show Callan’s Cessna first entered a 20-mile nautical ring around the Nashville airport at 1:50 a.m., according to the NTSB. He took the plane through little loops at the edge of the airport airspace then spent five minutes doing circles over the runways. He wasn’t on any manifest or flight schedule. He never made contact with the tower. But eventually, he tried to land.

Callan was an experienced pilot. But he wasn’t certified to fly in the kind of weather he hit in Nashville. He lost control. The plane hit the runway, tumbled and burst into flames. The wreckage tore along the ground for almost 200 metres. The propellers slashed into the concrete. The engine flew free.

What was left of the plane came to rest about 150 metres off the runway threshold. By the time the fire stopped, there wasn’t much left. Most of one wing was gone. The tail survived. A melted heap of char sat where the cockpit used to be.

In August 2015, 22 months after the crash, the NTSB released what’s known as an accident brief. It’s only a few paragraphs long. But it includes the investigators’ official hypothesis on what happened that day and why.

Found among the wreckage were notes suggesting Callan had navigated from Ontario to Nashville by hand. His autopsy revealed a blood alcohol level of 0.081, just over the legal limit. He was drunk, in other words, but not hammered. Blood tests, meanwhile, suggest he died on impact. He didn’t live long enough to perish in the flames.

Based on Callan’s criminal history, his erratic behaviour and his “significant interest” in a Nashville celebrity, the investigators wrote, Callan likely made an “impulsive decision” to fly to Nashville. He didn’t know enough to expect the fog, and when he hit that weather, he couldn’t make his way through.

As far as the investigators could determine, Callan told no one of his plans. They don’t know for sure why he flew to Nashville or who, if anyone, he intended to see. He didn’t speak much to his family. He had few friends. He wrote no final notes.

The probable cause of the crash then, stripped of aeronautical jargon, was this: a pilot trained to fly by sight hit deep fog. He couldn’t see. He tried to land. He failed.

Michael Callan — aka Leo Piloto Leon — was a bank robber, celebrity obsessive and frankly, an unpleasant man, according to many who knew him.

[cncpc]

You need to get out more.

I am minded of Shakespeare's "The more he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons."

[pdw]

celebrating his death as positive

He did his time from what the article states, and in the end did'nt take any body else down with him for his pre-described "dream" adventure (national post article/ last paragraph quote by the court: "A man's got to have a dream."). Not comparable to murderous ideology though, IMO.

A completely blind touchdown well before the end of the runway with only a PPL. I researched this the day it happened to find the unforseen widespread thick fog, inescapable with low fuel (for any reachable/alternate airport destination ); the large nearby airport with big runways was 'last chance' for survival.

[Brock Landers]

"He was 42 years old. He had robbed at least five banks and he was in love with a teenage celebrity. So, naturally, he tried to become a pilot"

Haha what is this supposed to mean?

[pdw]

So, naturally, he tried to become a pilot.

Keep an eye on context there.

[pdw]

"Naturally" (in that context) is just the author's expression for 'bent on getting the license', like 'goes without saying' ... he had to live up to " adopted name 'Leo Piloto Leon' " as used in the love letters sent to the young actress / National Post article.

Reads like it was 'matter of fact' he had to get the PPL, for the (speculated) flight to see her, to the farm airstrip "50km" from where he crashed. Starts to makes sense; just did'nt forsee the widespread ground fog developing down there on that otherwise clear night while enroute to that 'more remote' location outside Nashville.

[cncpc]

The man had mental health issues. He's dead. Govern yourself accordingly. If you can.

[cncpc]

I celebrate all the future victims that won't be.

That offends some people who worry more about criminals rights.

You've missed a very large group. Those who don't worry about criminal rights, but who you nonetheless offend.

The man had mental health issues. He's dead. And you have contributed exactly what to this thread?

You celebrate all the future victims that won't be? Have you lost the run of yourself?

[pelmet]

I celebrate all the future victims that won't be.

That offends some people who worry more about criminals rights.

You've missed a very large group. Those who don't worry about criminal rights, but who you nonetheless offend.

The man had mental health issues. He's dead. And you have contributed exactly what to this thread?

You celebrate all the future victims that won't be? Have you lost the run of yourself?

Hip, hip hooray. He's dead.

Yeah, I know, I'm such a terrible person. I offended some politically correct people while they who are supposedly such good people will release repeat offenders to victimize again and again.

And of course, that supposed very large group that is so offended now attributes almost every ISIS attacker these days as having "mental issues" as well. Perhaps the it is the offended group that needs some therapy.

[DanWEC]

I have to say I lean a bit towards agreeing with Pelmet on this one, albeit a bit more diplomatically.
Every real criminal has mental issues in varying degrees, that's what makes them a criminal. An absence of empathy and low threshold/reward values combined with an upbringing that doesn't keep them in check, dependant on their severity. From Mussolini to Bernie Madoff to Robert Pickton to that crossbow killer in the GTA last month, All heavily disturbed in different ways. It's a tragic mental breakdown and schizoid episode for some, wanton murder for pleasure for others.

I don't wish pain or death on anyone, but hailing from the small town of Windsor, I have some associations with his past actions, and they were terrible. He was far beyond rehabilitation, and now he won't terrorise anyone anymore. He caused lifelong scars, grief and anguish for many people.

I'm completely opposed to the death penalty from a philosophical standpoint, but the fact that his own criminal action directly resulted his removal from society, fortunately without taking the lives of others, and won't continue to be a $100k a year incarceration expense, is as ultimately serendipitous as it is tragic.

[pelmet]

I don't wish pain or death on anyone, but hailing from the small town of Windsor, I have some associations with his past actions, and they were terrible. He was far beyond rehabilitation, and now he won't terrorise anyone anymore. He caused lifelong scars, grief and anguish for many people.

Exactly. Yet some of the supposedly large offended group don't consider this at all and for some reason are more concerned about the criminal. Shame. If only they could guarantee us that they would be the only future victims. I guarantee you if that could somehow be predicted, their opinions would change but instead for some strange reason, are willing to have policies that will likely result in more victims but the odds are small that it will be themselves.

Sorry that this got political but there are real people, innocent people that have to live with this for the rest of their lives.

Please get over being offended and reconsider.

[cncpc]

I celebrate all the future victims that won't be.

That offends some people who worry more about criminals rights.

You've missed a very large group. Those who don't worry about criminal rights, but who you nonetheless offend.

The man had mental health issues. He's dead. And you have contributed exactly what to this thread?

You celebrate all the future victims that won't be? Have you lost the run of yourself?

Hip, hip hooray. He's dead.

Yeah, I know, I'm such a terrible person. I offended some politically correct people while they who are supposedly such good people will release repeat offenders to victimize again and again.

And of course, that supposed very large group that is so offended now attributes almost every ISIS attacker these days as having "mental issues" as well. Perhaps the it is the offended group that needs some therapy.

I think you answered my final question.