KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Isaiah Akloo said he was preparing to take off from the Kissimmee Gateway Airport on Saturday when he received the frantic call over the radio.
“I got told to abort the runway, abort the takeoff,” Akloo, a Clermont resident and pilot with Sunstate Aviation, recalled.
It was then air traffic control told him the little Cessna 150 that he had watched touch down, throttle up and immediately take off -- a training exercise known as “touch and go” – had crashed into the brush immediately after it left his line of sight.
Seven minutes passed, and air traffic controllers got onto the radio with him again, asking if he could take off and assist first responders in finding the crash site.
It took him just a few moments to find, one and a half miles from the end of the runway.
“We circled the area, looking for signs of life,” Akloo said. “We didn’t see anyone that stepped out of the airplane. We didn’t see anyone was moving, and so forth. So we tried to get pretty -- not too low, but low enough so we can relay that information to air traffic control at Kissimmee.”
He said they circled for 20 minutes, helping first responders find their way to the plane, before they left so the sheriff’s office helicopter could take over, and the medical helicopter could land.
Akloo said he remained calm throughout the process.
“At the end of the day, we’re all humans, we all, you know, go through all different types of stuff, and my goal was to help that person to live to see another day,” he said.
However, he didn’t realize that both the pilot and the passenger in the Cessna had survived. Firefighters didn’t share significant details about their conditions, only naming the plane’s owner as the flight instructor and saying one of the survivors was able to speak to them when they arrived.
One survivor was airlifted to the hospital, while the other was transported by ambulance. Both remain in critical condition.
“Oh my god,” Akloo said, upon hearing that both survived. “That just brought a joy over me, and I’m very grateful that those people survived.”
Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the plane to crash after its 40-minute flight. Kissimmee Fire Department Battalion Chief Stephen Gonnella said it was a fuel system issue.
“It was pretty mangled up, as you can imagine,” Gonnella said. “It appears that it would, you know, went nose down, so but it’s really difficult to tell because of all the dense vegetation that was there.”
WFTV left a message for the plane’s owner at their business before learning the plane’s owner was on board. Records show the plane was involved in only one prior crash: in 1974, the year after it was built, when its pilot landed too hard after a flight.
Firefighters said they expected the plane to be removed from the crash site sometime Sunday.
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