Venice Pilot Dies After Homemade Plane Crashes In Volusia County: VCSO

OAK HILL, FL — A 73-year-old Venice man died Tuesday after crashing a homemade airplane he was piloting into a tree in front of an Oak Hill home, according to a news release from the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

Charles Alban had just traded planes with another pilot for the one he was flying at the time of the crash, a Taylor Monoplane — an experimental, homemade aircraft, the sheriff’s office said.

Witnesses told deputies he taxied the plane several times at Blue Ridge Flightpark Airport around 3:30 p.m. After he got comfortable with the plane, he headed south on the airstrip and planned to fly home to Venice, VCSO said.

The plane didn’t climb into the air, though, and suddenly veered left, for unknown reasons, hitting the tree, the agency said.

Alban was taken to a hospital in the area and later died from his injuries.

After a preliminary investigation, detectives said that “nothing appeared suspicious about the aircraft." They also didn’t find anything on the runway that might have caused the plane to veer off course and crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the crash.