The pilot who died in a plane crash at Bangor International Airport has been identified as an Italian man, Bangor police announced Tuesday.
Luigi Accusani, 74, was the only occupant of the private plane that crashed while attempting to land around 1:20 p.m. Friday.
Video of the crash taken by 9-year-old aviation enthusiast Jaxon Cook, of Vassalboro, shows the plane coming in to land. It banked left and gained altitude momentarily before crashing into the grass.
It is the first fatal crash to ever occur at the Bangor airport, authorities said.
Aviation experts who spoke with the Press Herald after the crash hypothesized Accusani was performing a “go-around” maneuver, in which a pilot aborts a landing by touching down and immediately taking off again to circle around and attempt another landing.
Initial reports that the plane was taking off were incorrect, according to eyewitness observers, flight tracking data and recordings of air traffic control communications.
Accusani was flying the Cessna 185 — a single-engine, six-seat aircraft — from Goose Bay, Newfoundland.
He was given clearance to land in Bangor by the tower at 1:12 p.m., according to communications archived by LiveATC.net, a website that tracks air traffic control communications around the world. Four minutes later, the controller asked the pilot to clarify his intentions.
“I’m doing a liftoff,” Accusani replied, followed by something unintelligible.
The pilot requested a wind check three minutes later and was told it was gusting up to 19 knots, or about 22 mph. Two minutes after that, crews were informed that the plane had crashed.
The plane’s tail number, N714HE, is registered to United Kingdom-based Southern Aircraft Consultancy Inc., which helps non-Americans legally register their aircraft with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
The plane took off and landed multiple times in June and July in Italy, Switzerland and Austria, according to FlightAware, an airplane tracking website. In August, the plane was flown to France, the U.K. and Iceland before heading to Canada and eventually Bangor.
An administrator of a Facebook group for Italian aviators shared the news of Accusani’s death in a post Saturday.
“It is with great sorrow that we learn of the tragic demise of Luigi Accusani, affectionately called by all of us ‘The Conte’, perhaps one of the most extraordinary Italian aviators of our years,” the post reads, according to Facebook’s Italian-to-English translation.
