Investigation Unearths New Details on Roy Halladay Plane Crash

Federal aviation investigators released their preliminary report Monday on former MLB pitcher Roy Halladay’s fatal plane crash two weeks ago.

The National Transportation Safety Board did not place blame on Halladay, who was the pilot and sole passenger on his small, private plane. It could take one to two years to release a final report with conclusion, investigator Noreen Price said.

Instead, it laid out facts from both witnesses and the plane’s data recorder, which show that the retired baseball player performed steep turns and flew feet above the water in the moments before the “accident” on Nov. 7.

Price said Halladay had taken off from a lake near his Tampa-area home roughly 17 minutes before the fatal crash. The pilot, who had logged about 700 hours of flight time since getting his license in 2013, flew his ICON A5 to 1,900 feet before dropping it to 600 feet near the Gulf go Mexico coastline. When he reached the water, he dropped the plane to 36 feet, according to the plane’s data recorders.

While flying at 105 mph, Halladay skimmed the water at an altitude of 11 feet, then he flew in a circle as he climbed to 100 feet.

A witness told authorities that Halladay’s ICON A5 climbed to between 300 and 500 feet before it took a 45-degree dive, slamming into the water and flipping over.

Investigators found the All-Star pitcher’s body in the wreckage of the severely damaged plane. The plane was equipped with a parachute, but it was not deployed. Unused life jackets were also on board.

Halladay, former pitching star of the Philadelphia Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays, had received the ICON plane from the company on Oct. 10, and he was one of the first to receive the new model.

His flight logs showed he had 51 hours of flying experience in ICON A5s, including 14 in his plane that crashed.

After his retirement from baseball, Halladay took up flying as a recreational hobby, and he especially enjoyed the A5, which he said felt “like flying a fighter jet.”

The small plane model was created in 2014, and is meant to be treated like an ATV with folding wings. It can be pulled by a trailer to a lake, then it can take off from water.

The plane’s designer, Jon Murray Karkow, also died while flying an A5 in May. He was flying over California’s Lake Berryessa, and the crash was attributed to pilot error, the NTSB reported.