Millionaire trapeze artist doctor killed himself and daughter, 3, after going on three hour small plane joy ride that triggered fury from other pilots stunned by his selfish flying
A Colorado doctor and experienced trapeze artist, Aaron Gingrich, and his three-year-old daughter Isabella died when the small plane he was piloting crashed in the Rocky Mountains. The crash followed a flight of almost three hours, and the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report said the aircraft was at 7,375 feet shortly before it went down; investigators have not yet established the cause.
The pair took off from Vance Brand Airport in Longmont on 4 October and were found the next morning near Eldorado Springs, where the wreckage lay at about 7,360 feet. Audio captured another pilot criticising Gingrich’s take-off as dangerous, but the report does not explain the flight path or establish whether it contributed to the crash. Gingrich was an emergency medicine instructor at the University of Colorado Anschutz and received his private pilot’s licence in 2016; a fundraiser was set up to support Isabella’s mother.
- A Colorado doctor and his three-year-old daughter died in a mountain plane crash.
- The flight lasted almost three hours before the aircraft went down.
- Investigators have not yet determined what caused the crash.
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Aaron Gingrich was an emergency medicine instructor and private pilot in Colorado, a US state whose Rocky Mountain terrain includes high ground and changing weather. He and his three-year-old daughter Isabella died after their small plane crashed near Eldorado Springs.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigates aviation accidents and publishes preliminary reports while the cause is still being examined. Its report gives details of the aircraft’s altitude and the long flight, but does not establish why it crashed or whether the flight path played a part.
The case matters because it involves the deaths of a young child and an experienced adult pilot, and raises questions about what happened during the flight. Audio captured another pilot criticising the take-off, but that criticism alone does not show what caused the crash.