FAA to talk to 2 hurt in plane crash near MacArthur Airport

The Federal Aviation Administration will begin questioning the pilot and passenger involved in Saturday's Bohemia plane crash as soon as they can speak with investigators, an FAA spokesman said Sunday.

Myron David Rowe of Mount Sinai, the pilot, was practicing touch-and-go landings at Long Island MacArthur Airport Saturday when his single-engine Beechcraft Musketeer crashed a half-mile from the runway. Rowe and his flight instructor, David Jensen, are recovering in the burn unit at Stony Brook University Medical Center.

Jensen, of Mid-Island Air Service flight school in Ronkonkoma, is in good condition, hospital spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow said. Sheprow said Rowe's family asked that his condition not be made public.

FAA spokesman Jim Peters said investigators have not yet been able to interview the two men because of the extent of their injuries.

"I don't think that we would disturb them while they are in the hospital," he said. "We would not attempt to bother them at this point."

Neither Jensen's nor Rowe's families returned phone calls to their homes Sunday. Sheprow said the families declined to be interviewed at the hospital.

The FAA will conduct the investigation for the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said. Holloway said the NTSB expects to release a preliminary report on the accident within 10 days.

Because the plane was so small, it did not carry a flight data recorder, Peters said, so investigators will instead study records from radar that tracked the flight path. From that, he said, they will be able to determine how quickly the small plane lost altitude and glean clues about why it crashed.