A man who piloted an “experimental, amateur-built” two-seater plane was launched from the vessel and fell through the air moments before the aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania, a National Transportation Safety Board review found. Several witnesses to the 2022 accident saw Ronald Snyder, 76, spiral through the air near the plane’s tail just before the whole craft went down. According to investigators, Snyder unbuckled his seatbelt for an unknown reason right before he was bucked from the craft altogether. “It is possible that either the pilot fell out of the airplane while attempting to observe the tail section, or that the pilot displaced a flight control while attempting to observe the tail, which then caused an abrupt pitching moment that ejected him from the airplane,” the NTSB’s report reads. The plane crashed, likely nose-first at a vertical, about 5 miles southwest of Wilkes-Barre airport, killing its remaining passenger, 59-year-old Michael Bowen. The experimental Bearhawk plane went down only three minutes after takeoff, Penn Live reported.
