BOULDER CITY (KTNV) — 75 year old Doug Smith has lived in Boulder City for more than a decade, and began questioning why three aircraft had crashed near his town when the third hard landed south of the airport Friday afternoon.
"That's sort of strange," Smith said. "I don't think I've heard of that many since I've been here."
The single engine prop plane owned out of Connecticut crashed into a fence feet from the edge of a solar power array.
"If it landed there, it's just a lot of electricity and high power lines in those solar cells," Smith said. "Could have been interesting to do a rescue among that."
Two passengers escaped that crash with minor injuries, but previous crashed were more tragic.
In February, an ultralight aircraft struck three power lines north west of the airport killing the pilot, and in June another pilot died after crashing a single engine prop plane into a dry lake bed along US 95.
Sherri-Ann Spargo, a Boulder City resident, said she hopes investigations currently underway by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety board could provide answers into what caused each crash.
"Why are these plances going down in the first place? There's a small airport here. It's not like there's huge planes or if there's mechanical issues, or I don't know what's happening there," she said.
NTSB investigations can take more than a year to complete, and, to date, the organization has only released a preliminary report on the February ultralight crash.
