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PHOTOS-Mike Connell, Witness in Bush/Rove Vote Tampering, Dies in Plane Crash (Michael Connell)

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 24 December 2008
5 comments

USA

Michael Connell, 45, webmaster to the stars of the neocon world, died instantly just before 6 p.m. Friday (Dec. 19) in a plane crash while landing at the Akron-Canton Regional Airport in Ohio.
Connell had supposedly testified by deposition in a federal court case just 6 weeks earlier in a case that Republican/neocon operatives had long attempted to quash. http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/Lincoln-Response-11-4-08-ExA.pdf

1 http://arkansas.indymedia.org/usermedia/image/1/large/connell_kdepo_nov3_2008.jpg

The original complaint, filed Aug. 8, 2006, alleged that in the 2004 election in which George W. Bush narrowly won Ohio (a key election state), election officials, especially then-Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, deprived African-Americans and students from voting freely and having their votes properly counted. The suit also mentions "private contractors" and "breaking "the bi-partisan chain of custody of ballots," presumably where Mike Connell and a company called SmarTech in Chattanooga, TN, figure in.

Connell’s website shows (or did show) a long client list of neoconsertive politicians and predatory corporate interests.

2 http://arkansas.indymedia.org/usermedia/image/3/large
/connell_jhall_of_infamy_top.jpg

Michael L. Connell and his wife Heather operated the website- and IT-consulting firms New Media Communications (technomania.com) with offices listed as at Suite D, 3046 Brecksville Rd. in Richfield, OH, and another firm, GovTech Solutions (govtechsolutions.com) with offices at 302 N. Cleveland-Massillon Rd. in Akron, OH. Neocons hire New Media to get elected and GovTech afterwards.

According to FlightAware’s Live Flight Tracker service, Mike Connell had flown his plane, a single-engine Piper Saratoga with the tail number N9299N from Akron-Canton to the College Park, MD, airport near Washington, DC, on Thursday morning, December 18, 2008. According to the Stark County (OH) coroner, Connell had on him a receipt for a breakfast he had in Washington on Friday, Dec. 19. He flew back home that afternoon using the same airports, as the map shows.

3. http://arkansas.indymedia.org/usermedia/image/8/flight_track_map.gif

The flight log shows everything going normally up to and including the last notation. Connell was at 3300 ft and about 6 or 7 minutes out from the airport. It was at about this point that he would have throttled back the plane’s engine and begun a steady descent.

4 http://arkansas.indymedia.org/usermedia/image/10/large/connell_jdec_19.jpg

Four minutes later, instead of Mike Connell being at less than 1000-ft altitude near the airport, he was flying very low and very fast from the west over houses on Charolais St. in Uniontown, OH. The Piper impacted the front yard at 2017 Charolais St. NW; plowed through the grass, taking out a flag pole and a circle of landscaping blocks around it; and slid and tumbled past the vacant (foreclosed) house and across the driveway and into a swing set. The tail rested near a basketball hoop and a small group of pine trees. Michael Connell died instantly.

5. http://arkansas.indymedia.org/usermedia/image/2/large/connell_j2017_charolais_st_nw.jpg

The Greentown fire department had received a 911 at 5:55 p.m., arrived within 4 minutes, and put a small fire on the exterior of the house and another in the fully engulfed fuselage, all in another 5 minutes. Wreckage was strewn over 100 yards.

6. http://arkansas.indymedia.org/usermedia/image/6/large/connell_photo+01.jpg

Connell was an experienced pilot with an instrument flight rating.

CONNELL, MICHAEL LOUIS

Airman’s Address :
AKRON, OH
FAA Region : Great Lakes

Date of Medical : Oct, 2007

Class of Medical : 3

Expiration of Class 3 : Oct, 2009

Airman Certificates : Private Pilot

Airplane Single Engine Land

Instrument Airplane

He owned the plane and was experienced in flying it. The registered owner is a company at the same address as New Media Communications. The plane reportedly is based at the Akron-Canton Airport. The pilot himself lived in Bath Township (Jeffrey Dahmner’s old home town).

N-number : N9299N

Aircraft Serial Number : 3257018

Aircraft Manufacturer : PIPER

Model : PA-32R-301T

Engine Manufacturer : LYCOMING

Model : TI0-540 SER

Aircraft Year : 1997

Owner Name : SIERRA-NOVEMBER AVIATION INC

Owner Address : 3046 BRECKSVILLE RD

RICHFIELD, OH, 44286-9399

Type of Owner : Corporation

Registration Date : 21-Aug-2007

Airworthiness Certificate Type : Standard

Approved Operations : Normal

Julie Fano said the house at 2017 Charolais St. had been vacant since the spring. She and her husband, Joe, were eating dinner when they heard the plane’s engine cutting in and out.

Apparently the plane had entered an abnormal flight condition called a "stall," in which the propeller is unable to provide enough air flow over the wings to provide the lift to keep the plane from falling. A stall can normally be recovered from unless the engine is unable to deliver adequate power, or control surfaces on the wings or tail are inoperable. It will take months before the National Transportation Safety Board renders a verdict on the cause of the crash.

Weather was apparently not a factor.

If the engine had failed, Mike Connell should have been able to make an emergency landing in a nearby field, as all pilots are trained to do. It is possible that he panicked and that the cause will be ruled as "pilot error."

Forum posts

  • Mike Connell’s Piper Sarartoga N9299N Suffered what we call catastrophic ice stall . The freezing rain we were experiencing that afternoon formed on his port (left) wing as he decended out of the clouds causing it to lose lift. He probably encountered an immediate spin before he could engage the plane’s anti ice system and at angels three he didn’t have enough time to correct out of the spin.

    Bottom line, Bad Weather and pilot error ( never fly into an Ice Storm) caused the crash. Sorry no Conspiracy .
    The bad guys are not smart enough to pull this off with perfect timing to the storm.

    Signed,
    a pilot from KCAK (Akron Canton Airport)

  • First of all, here’s the NTSB’s prelim. report:

    < http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20081223X12815&key=1 >

    The weather conditions — overcast at 100 feet and a temp of 1 degree celsius — were such that icing could have easily occurred at the altitude indicated for the initial approach phase. Also, the approach was abandoned and therefore the pilot spent quite a bit of time between 1000 and 3200 feet, during which a fatal amount of ice might have accumulated.

    The comment about icing occurring on one wing and not the other is incorrect; an aircraft flying into icing with no deicing equipment will have ice collecting on both wings at the same rate regardless whether the a/c is turning or not. (Unless the a/c’s in a helluva full rudder pedal skid or slip.) Also, the Saratoga is single-engine, so there is no airflow over the wings that is provided by the propeller.

    I don’t believe that this accident is another neo-con conspiracy. Sadly, it’s probably another relatively low-time pilot making fatal errors in judgement.

    May he rest in Peace.

    j.

    • The Piper Saratoga that Mike was flying was his own airplane, a 1997 model. This is a top of the line single engine with turbo motor with all the bells and whistles regarding navigation, auto pilot, the works. Mike had over 500 hours of flight experience. He was not a beginner. We can be fairly certain that he was familiar with the systems in this airplane which included anti-icing equipment. He asked about reports of icing. Received an answer to the negative. It takes some time for ice to develop and if it did, he had anti-icing equipment and some time to notice its buildup. The Saratoga is a low-wing airplane and Mike would have clearly seen any ice buildup.
      He was experiencing a left of center deviation on the approach that he did not seem to be able to correct. I find this puzzling. The winds were not that strong and he should have been able to make the correction easily. Why not?
      He also declared an emergency while climbing out from the missed approach. Too bad he didn’t say what the emergency was, or didn’t he?
      Where are the ATC tapes?
      Oh by the way, wasn’t a Saratoga the plane that John Kennedy Jr. also "fell from the sky" in?
      ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

    • I’m with you. Lots of things don’t add up here. We need unadulterated ATC and radar tapes to understand this better.

    • Piper Saratoga’s do not have anti icing equipment. They are not certified to fly into known icing. Dam shame