Jan Waldahl

I have to bring you the sad news that Jan Waldahl was killed together with his passenger when Falco LN-JAN crashed at its home airport yesterday evening (May 9, 2002). The aircraft was doing a low pass when apparently something went terribly wrong and the aircraft crashed into the sea which is surrounding the airport. It was a very violent crash with no chance of survivors. I am in contact with the Norwegian NTSB and will bring you more details as soon as I get them. As for me I guess that you know that my Falco was sold to England in 1996 and to my knowledge still is operational there. I suffered a brain bleeding in 1997 and had to quit flying from then. However I have had a pretty good recovery and plan to visit Oshkosh next year (The 10th anniversary of my Falco flight. This time it will be as an airliner passenger though. Bjorn Eriksen be001@online.no Teieveien 8 3121 Tonsberg NORWAY Phone 047 90791826 We now have preliminary reports of this accident. In this flight, Jan Waldahl was in the left seat, and a pilot friend was in the right seat. Both Jan and his friend were very experienced seaplane pilots, but neither were experienced in acrobatics, although Jan had been seen doing rolls at altitude. The accident took place at the Sandane airfield, Jan's home base airport, which has a 2,600' long runway. The ATIS controller in the tower was the principal eye-witness to the accident. The airplane did a low pass down the runway, then pulled up. During the pull-up the airplane was observed to start a right-hand roll to the inverted. Therafter the airplane continued through a barrel roll-like maneuver which ended up in a rolling pull-out. However, the altidude was only about 500 ft AGL, and the airplane hit the ground at high speed in a 60-70 deg dive angle. The airplane was completely demolished, with the tail section being the largest piece. Impact was only a few yards from the end of the runway, and parts of the airplane went into the sea, which is very close to the end of the runway. Immediately prior to impact, the airplane was observed in what appeared to be an attempted correction to avoid the ground, and the airplane looked like it was out of control as this time. Apparently the pilot regained control during the pull-out. The airplane flew the last part of the pull-out with nearly level wings. It hit the ground with approx 10 deg RH bank. The initial heading was 090 deg. During the pull-up, RH roll, followed by the rolling pull-out, the airplane changed heading to 340 deg which was the crash heading. Alfred Scott