WATSONVILLE – Bob Joseph Ross of Santa Cruz, the owner of United Flight Services, and his son, 32-year-old Michael C. Ross, of Austin, Texas, died in a airplane crash Tuesday, the second small plane connected to the business at Watsonville Municipal Airport to crash in less than a month.
The Baxter County Sheriff’s Office said the 1982 Cessna T-210 crashed about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in a remote area near Buffalo City, Ark. Father and son are believed to have been the only people aboard the plane, according to the sheriff’s office. Both men were pilots but investigators don’t yet know which of them was piloting the plane, which was traveling to Austin Texas.
The plane is registered to Watsonville-based Monterey Bay Aviation, which operates United Flight Service. On Aug. 13, a Piper Cherokee Arrow from the flight-training and plane-rental company crashed in a remote area of the Sierra Nevada mountains, killing a Santa Cruz flight instructor and a college student from Watsonville.
Baxter County Sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Lewis told the Mountain Home, Ark.-based Baxter Bulletin no distress call was reported by the Federal Aviation Administration, and that the plane simply dropped off agency radar screens. A citizen reported the crash, he said.
The crash site is about 90 miles north of Little Rock near the Missouri border.
Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were heading to the scene.
If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, call 888.777.1776 or email us to speak with a personal injury attorney at Alexander Law Group, LLP, LLP, today.
