What Crash? Steelers owner back in the air
LATROBE – When Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney called his wife after averting disaster in a plane crash Wednesday night, he told her it was his greatest landing ever. “She said, ‘I don’t want to hear that,” Rooney told reporters Thursday at St. Vincent College.
And Rooney didn’t want to hear anything about giving up his wings, either. He was back in the air the next day, piloting another Cessna to his team’s training camp, where he talked about his harrowing experience of the previous night.
“I really was fine flying. I did not panic,” Rooney said of the ordeal.
The electrical power in Rooney’s Cessna aircraft went out soon after he took off from Latrobe Airport Wednesday night as his team practiced at nearby Latrobe Memorial Stadium. Rooney credited a telephone operator and a controller at Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin for helping him execute an emergency landing at 8:45 p.m. near a runway at Allegheny County Airport.
“Almost immediately the electric went off,” Rooney said, and as soon as he realized he had no power, he attempted to lower the plane’s landing gear. The electrical power didn’t work, but even the manual hand crank was jammed. He then attempted to call the Allegheny County tower but could only reach an answering machine. He then called emergency 9-1-1.
“The fellow at 9-1-1 did a great job,” Rooney said. “He contacted the tower and was relaying the messages between the tower and me. I got the instructions that they wanted me to do.”
Rooney was instructed to continue flying in a pattern around the airport in order to burn fuel, and then his cell phone went dead.
“So I just shook my wings and came in and landed,” he said.
Rooney, 70, could either land in the grass or on the runway. He chose the grass “because I felt that there would not be sparks or anything like that, and it worked.”
According to Rooney, flying the Cessna was an advantage in the situation because “you fly very much nose up,” making it easier to land the plane on its belly.
He said the impact was “normal” as the plane “went down, hit the back end of the plane and then the front came down. I kept going forward, no spin or anything like that, and then finally I hit the markers that say which runway it was, and I hit that, and that put the plane in a turn and the plane came to a stop. … And when the plane came to a stop, I shut things down, got out of the plane. Then I was a little bit concerned.”
Rooney was checked by paramedics at the scene but did not receive treatment. As for the plane, Rooney felt it was “nicked up a pretty good bit,” but was informed by mechanics that the plane is salvageable. The following afternoon, Rooney flew back to Latrobe for a press conference at St. Vincent College.
Rooney told reporters he has nearly 2,000 hours of piloting experience since learning to fly in 1975. The only previous problem he’d encountered was engine trouble as a trainee.
“I was much more frightened then because I was just a student,” he said of a flight that ended without incident.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating Wednesday’s emergency landing.
“They have some ideas on what happened, but I’m not at liberty to say,” Rooney said. “I do want to say that I thought everybody really conducted themselves most professionally. I have great appreciation for the operator that got the 911 call, the controller in the tower, the firemen and the paramedics. Everybody did really conduct themselves, not only professionally, but they were very kind and concerned and wanted to make sure I was OK.”
Rooney attempted to acquire the names of both the 9-1-1 operator and the controller but was unsuccessful.
At St. Vincent College, Steelers coach Bill Cowher learned of the incident Wednesday night from Director of Football Operations Kevin Colbert. Cowher then called Rooney.
“I told him there’s a road with the No. 30 on it that’s not a bad way of going,” Cowher said of Route 30. “I’d rather see him just drive up here, but he loves to fly.
“He’s an amazing man. That whole situation epitomizes him: no panic. He said it was the best landing he ever had and he got right back on the bike. To his credit, he handled it like we knew he would.”