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Plane crash kills ex-Pasco resident

By JAMAL THALJI
Published December 28, 2006

Mike Burlingham made his living on the water. But being in the air was in his blood.

Growing up in Michigan, he heard his stepfather's tales of piloting the Chicago-to-Detroit airmail route back in the days of Charles Lindbergh.

After 20 years in the watercraft industry, Burlingham got his pilot's license in 2001. He picked New Port Richey's airport community of Hidden Lake when he moved to Florida in 2002. He picked another airpark in Port St. Lucie when he moved this year for a new job.

Burlingham was doing what he loved best Tuesday when something went horribly awry over Tennessee.

His single-engine Rockwell Commander 114, carrying three passengers, plowed through the trees in Rodney Hood's front yard in Jasper, Tenn., crashed into the ground and flipped over, Hood told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Authorities on Wednesday confirmed the identities of the plane's occupants. The Marion County Medical Examiner's Office said Burlingham, 51, and his 84-year-old mother, Gertrude Rutter, died on impact.

The two survivors, the pilot's 51-year-old wife, Carol Burlingham, and Thomas Ebel, 26, of Macatawa, Mich., were reported in critical condition Wednesday at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga.

"We're still reeling from the whole story," said Phyllis Pixler, who befriended Mike Burlingham when he moved to Hidden Lake four years ago. "I just keep waiting to hear it was a mistake."

National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrived at the crash scene Wednesday, but federal authorities did not release any additional information about the crash.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen told the Times Free Press the pilot radioed the air traffic control center in Memphis, but she would not comment on whether the plane sent a distress signal. The plane took off from Zeeland, Mich. and flew south for more than 600 miles before going down 25 miles west of Chattanooga.

Mike Burlingham loved planes, but he worked with boats, starting as an engineer and working his way up to the board room. His old company, S2 Yachts, Inc., lured him back this year to be vice president of sales and marketing of its Pursuit Boats subsidiary in Fort Pierce.

Mike and Carol Burlingham became a couple in 2003 after meeting at their 30th high school reunion in Dowagiac, Mich. They married in July 2005, in Florida and Michigan.

"We didn't date in high school, but maybe we should have," Carol Burlingham told the Times last year.

She had never been in a small plane before. But soon she shared his love of flying. She was logging flying hours and taking lessons - from her husband.

"Neither one of them was one to sit still," Pixler said. "They always had something going on."

Mike Burlingham first flew when he was 18. "The thing about aviation is that, unlike learning how to drive, you have to be really good at this - it's a very serious thing," he told the Times in 2005.

He already owned a 1963 Piper Cherokee and a red RV-6A. He recently acquired the 1978 Rockwell Commander 114. He had to have it.

"He was so happy with that plane," Pixler said. "He waited quite a while to acquire it. It was just one he had his eye on.

"For whatever reason, this particular one he had to have."

[Last modified December 27, 2006, 23:54:56]