Pilot killed in Utah plane crash was founder of ski company

The pilot killed when his small plane crashed into a Utah neighborhood Wednesday was the founder of a company that made skis

SALT LAKE CITY —
The pilot killed when his small plane crashed into a Utah neighborhood Wednesday was the founder of a company that made skis and he loved water skiing, snow skiing and flying his airplane, the business said Thursday.

David Goode, 64, was the only one inside a twin-engine Cessna that clipped one home before crashing in a street in between other town homes in Roy, about about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Salt Lake City, Roy Police Sgt. Matthew Gwynn said in a news release. Nobody else was injured.

The cause of the crash is unknown, Gwynn said. The National Transportation and Safety Board is investigating.

Goode was the founder and president of Ogden-based Goode Ski Technologies, which makes water skis and snow skis. He was an avid water and snow skier and was named to the Water Ski Hall of Fame in 2014, the company said in a post on its website.

He had recently won a downhill event at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Alpine Masters National Speed Series and won a bronze medal in trick skiing at the Pan American Senior Water Ski Championships, the company said.

He is survived by his wife, Dawn, his four children and two grandchildren.

Goode had taken off around 3 p.m. from an airport in Bountiful for what was supposed to be a short flight to an airport in Ogden, but he crashed about half a mile (1 kilometer) from the runway, Gwynn said.

Photos and videos that people posted online showed the wreckage on fire, with flames a few feet high topped by black smoke on a street with houses on both sides.

David Guerrero heard the crash from the basement of his home in the neighborhood and ran outside with his video camera to see what had happened. He saw a small plane on fire and gave his camera to somebody else to run home and get a fire extinguisher to go help.

Police stopped him from getting any closer, though, and shortly after his video captured a loud explosion that came from the demolished plane, Guerrero said. He said the explosion shook him.

“You hear and see the explosion and you just know that someone died in front of you, so it’s very shocking,” Guerrero said. “I haven’t stopped thinking about that all day. ”

It was the fifth private plane crash that Roy City Police have responded to since 2016, which is why Police Chief Carl Merino said Thursday he will spearhead an investigation into safety concerns at the nearby Ogden Municipal Airport. Merino said the city will work the NTSB, the Federal Aviation Administration and airport owners to find out why so many planes are crashing.

Four schools sit under the flight path, he said.

“It has become quite clear there is a safety problem for these aircraft,” Merino said in a news release.

A small plane crashed near Roy in November after hitting a billboard. Two people on board, a commercial pilot and a student, were injured. The same plane had made an emergency landing on Interstate 15 in May 2018.

Another small plane made an emergency landing on a nearby state highway in September 2017. Neither of the two people aboard were seriously injured.

In July 2017, two couples on vacation were killed when their small plane crashed.

Guerrero said the number of plane crashes in the area has residents spooked. He said his mother regularly takes walks right where Wednesday’s plane crashed.

“I don’t what is going on here,” he said. “It’s scary to live close to things like this that happen.”