"A Plane Without A Pilot"Crashes Into House

We're still tracking down details, but a Canadian-registered Bellanca Citabria or Scout recently crashed into a house. The pilot wasn't injured because the pilot wasn't on the scene. They were presumably back at the airfield drying their tears after having watched their airplane take off without them.

The crash took place in Alberta, Canada, and the plane wound up crashing in Medicine Hat, near a golf course.

The image posted to Reddit shows a fabric-covered taildragger resting at the corner of a residential building that appears to be under construction or renovation. The original poster stated, "!a plane that didn't have a pilot crashed into a house. Apparently, the pilot left the engine running and it somehow took off," adding that it, "!circled around one of the neighborhoods for 30 minutes (low enough that someone on the ground could see there wasn't a pilot) before crashing into a hill and coming to rest against a house."

This kind of thing has happened before, and we're not talking about Trevor Jacob. Usually, the occurrence of a runaway airplane has something to do with the hand-propping procedure gone wrong. That's exactly what happened in late 1997 when a 1946 Aeronca Champ leapt into the Ohio sky for two hours, crashing into a bean field about 90 miles away after reportedly reaching 12,000 feet. We're thinking that altitude may be a record for the Champ. The best quote from that story came from the airport secretary, Carol Hall, who said simply, "It just got away from him, and it took off."

Matt RussellWriter