Witnesses say Halladay’s plane flying low over Gulf

Full investigation into crash that killed former Blue Jay could take up to two years

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.— Roy Halladay was flying his tiny sport plane low over the Gulf of Mexico shortly before it slammed into the water and killed the retired star pitcher, witnesses told federal investigators.

National Transportation Safety Board Investigator Noreen Price said Wednesday that Halladay’s ICON A5 experienced a “high-energy impact” with the water. She said both flight data recorders were recovered and the plane did not have a voice recorder.

She said Halladay had been a licensed pilot since 2013 and logged about 700 hours of flight time before Tuesday’s crash near Tampa, Fla. She said a preliminary report on the cause likely will be issued in seven to 10 days, but the full investigation could take up to two years.

Price said it was too early to say whether Halladay’s crash was related to two earlier crashes this year of A5s, one of them that killed both the plane’s chief designer and test pilot.

“Every accident is different. They are very complex. So as we move forward in the factual finding phase, if we see anything that we believe might connect it to previous accidents, we will certainly look at that. And if we see anything that we think is unsafe, we will make recommendation immediately,” Price said during a news conference.

The 40-year-old former Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies pitcher had been the proud owner of his ICON A5 for less than a month and was among the first to fly the model. In one of many enthusiastic tweets about the plane, Halladay said it felt “like flying a fighter jet.”

Rolled out in 2014, the A5 is an amphibious aircraft meant to be treated like an ATV, a piece of weekend recreational gear with folding wings that can easily be towed on a trailer to a lake where it can take off from the water.

“The way that a lot of people described it is a Jet Ski with wings,” Stephen Pope, editor-in-chief of Flying magazine said.

The man who led the plane’s design, 55-year-old John Murray Karkow, died while flying an A5 over California’s Lake Berryessa on May 8, a crash the NTSB attributed to pilot error.

Low flying was part of the problem when Karkow crashed, according to federal investigators. Halladay’s ICON A5 went down around noon Tuesday off the coast of Florida, Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said.