Plane that crashed in Boynton might have taken off with no fuel, report says

BOYNTON BEACH -- A small plane that crashed in a Boynton Beach neighborhood March 6, killing the pilot, likely took off from the nearby Lantana airport with its fuel tanks nearly empty, a preliminary report suggests.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board's initial report, posted Wednesday morning, the single-engine plane's two fuel tanks, one on each wing, both were ruptured but contained "no evidence of residual fuel" and that the crash site had no fuel smell and no browned grass, which would indicate a spill.

On top of that, the report said, the valve that switches between tanks "was devoid of fuel," as was the engine-driven fuel pump. And the carburetor's "float bowl" had only about two drops of fuel in it.

"Sounds like he took off empty. No fuel," Dave Freudenberg, a former Boca Raton city commissioner and a longtime private pilot, said Wednesday of the report's wording.

John R. Pardillo, 67, from the Miami area, was the only person on board the 2-seat Grumman American AA-5. He was killed when the aircraft, crashed into a backyard at Dos Lagos, a gated community near Congress Avenue and Miner Road.

According to the NTSB's interim report -- full investigations usually take up to a year -- the two-seater had been in the air for just 20 minutes. Security cameras at Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana showed the plane being worked in at a hangar at 12:42 p.m. Records show it left the airport about four minutes later.

The NTSB report said the plane showed up on Federal Aviation Administration tracking radar at about 1:14 p.m. It was about 1½ miles southeast of the Lantana airport and was flying east-southeast at about 1,350 feet.

The radar showed the plane made a climbing right turn to about 1,700 feet, flying at about 97 mph, and eventually was heading west-southwest. It then descended until the radar lost it at 550 feet, traveling just 50 mph.

Freudenberg said typical air speed for that kind of plane is 140 to 170 mph.

The report said a neighbor whose windows were open heard what sounded like "a boat having engine trouble," then heard a loud thump. Another person reported watching the plane's wings appear to "waggle" and saw it roll upside down, then plunge nose-down and corkscrew rapidly before disappearing behind a tree line.

The plane struck a 40-inch diameter, 18-foot-tall palm tree, slicing it at about 5 feet up, then came to a stop against a fence about 30 feet from the back wall of a home.

Both wings were partially torn off. A track of pieces torn from the plane stretched about 70 feet, ending at the bank of the Lake Ida Canal, the report said.

Freudenberg, now retired in Tennessee, said Wednesday said the plane probably had some fuel, the same way motorists don't let their car tanks get completely empty before they stop at a gas station. But, he said, it's possible the plane wasn't fueled before it left.

The tanks likely had "basically enough to start and go, and that's it," Freudenberg said. "You run out of gas on the highway, you pull over. You run out gas in the air, it's a little more complicated."

It's not known if the pilot was in a hurry to leave before air travel restrictions kicked in in advance of that evening's arrival of Air Force One. President Donald J. Trump spent that weekend at his Mar-a-Lago compound.

FAA records show the plane's registration had expired Sept. 30. The report said Pardillo, the pilot, held a valid certificate and had accrued 350 hours of flying, about 249 hours of that in single-engine planes.

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