Mon, May 12 2008
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Published April 29, 2008 11:00 pm - MIAMI, Okla. — The family of a retired Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College professor said Tuesday that he was the pilot of a turboprop plane that crashed Monday afternoon near the Miami exit of the Will Rogers Turnpike. Retired NEO professor believed killed in crash By Jeff Lehr jlehr@joplinglobe.com MIAMI, Okla. — The family of a retired Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College professor said Tuesday that he was the pilot of a turboprop plane that crashed Monday afternoon near the Miami exit of the Will Rogers Turnpike. Clair Tromsness, 72, had taken his customized turboprop Turbine Legend up from the Miami airport for a short flight over the town, his wife, Florence Tromsness, told the Globe in a telephone interview. “He had left from the airport just 20 minutes before (the crash),” she said. The plane that crashed on the highway, killing the pilot, was seen tumbling out of control about 500 to 600 feet above the ground before dropping nose-first onto the turnpike. No vehicles on the interstate highway were struck by the plane. The crash sent a plume of fire 50 to 60 feet into the air, and the plane burned. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol on Tuesday was not yet releasing the name of the pilot who was killed in the crash. Trooper Colby Overstreet said the body had been turned over to the state medical examiner’s office in Tulsa for purposes of identification. “We’re waiting on his report,” Overstreet said. He said the plane was destroyed and could not be identified with certainty. He said that while the state patrol is fairly certain who the pilot was and what plane was involved, procedures needed to be followed before any name could be released. “If it’s the plane we think it is, then it did take off from Miami,” Overstreet said. “But we’re still not 100 percent sure of the identity of the pilot or the plane.” He said the cause of the crash remained under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board. Florence Tromsness said the family is convinced that her husband was the pilot. “We all feel certain about that,” she said. She said her husband was an experienced pilot, having flown since the 1960s. He owned a Cessna as well as the plane that crashed. His wife said he always told her that the customized turboprop had no means to stay aloft if its single engine were to quit. 
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