Plane Crashes Into House In Connecticut

Plane crashes onto house in Groton, Connecticut. Photo courtesy of Groton Police Department

A piston twin-engine plane crashed into, or rather, onto, a house in Groton, Connecticut, last night, and this is the third best kind of crash story to write, in that no one on the ground was injured and the people in the plane suffered, according to the authorities, no life-threatening injuries. (For the record, the best kind of accident stories are none at all and the second best are ones where no one gets a scratch.)

The feds are investigating this one, but locals say it was likely that the plane was on approach for Runway 05 at Groton-New London (KGON) when it came up just a little bit short. And the plane didn't crash into the house, but on top of it. And there was no fire---yeah, we know investigators will be checking to see if there was fuel onboard. The one occupant of the house? Local reporters say it was one guy, and we can only imagine the short field landing atop his home got his attention.

The occupants of the plane, authorities said, were taken to a local hospital with what they characterized as "non-life-threatening" injuries. The Piper Seneca wasn't as lucky.

Weather at the time of the crash was reported as dark with light rain, though by the time news crews arrived and began rolling cameras the precipitation looked slightly worse than that.

Which all leads us to the big question: how on earth did the plane come to rest on top of the house without catastrophic damage? Without doorbell footage---and no one has come forward with any yet---we'll probably have to wait until the occupants tell their story..then again, who knows how good a sense of it they had of the little details; it was dark and rainy and things doubtless happened fast and loudly. Our best guess is that the occupants were the near-miraculous recipients of the perfect amount of energy dissipation happening by total dumb luck, kind of like you might have seen in this video of a Cessna 172 crashing into a tree in a parking lot, which also happened in Connecticut. Hmm.

The NTSB and FAA are investigating the mishap.

Watch some surprisingly good local news coverage of the incident here.

Plane & PilotStaff