The family of CassuTT owner Creighton King has confirmed he died in the crash of his race plane near West Jordan Airport in Utah Wednesday. The tiny single-seat plane went down on a soccer park near the airport that local media say has been used twice for emergency landings in the last year. The aircraft crashed on the soccer pitch and went through a chain link fence before crossing a road and stopping next to a sidewalk. The pilot was declared dead at the scene and has not been formally identified. However, tributes are pouring in on social media for King.
King was well known in Formula 1 airplane racing circles and the kit industry for his adaptation of the venerable CassuTT design. The T-tailed CassuTT has set speed records and was a modernized version of the original design. His sister Harmonie King Wheeler confirmed the bad news late Wednesday afternoon. “We are devastated to lose my brother Creighton King in the plane crash today in West Jordan,” she wrote on Facebook. She also expressed thanks for the many messages of support and said the family needs time to process their loss before announcing any services for him.
I am very sorry to read this as I knew Creighton and had talked with him on 2 days at Oshkosh. He was a member of EAA Chapter 23 and I had looked at his plane at a visit to his hangar a few years back. The plane had been involved in 2 previous incidents that I know of. The control stick broke off prior to a race in Tunisia when a weld broke. The the pilot managed to land using trim, power, and rudder. Creighton had bumped the canopy release during a flight (maybe to Oshkosh in ~2019) and suffered a serious gash to his head when the canopy was ripped off. He temporally lost control and lost his handheld radio but managed to land at an airport. I will have wait for the accident report but I remember not being impressed with the welds but this seems to be a problem on takeoff.
Here is more information from a local TV station but, as always, some eye witness accounts may be suspect:
https://www.ksl.com/article/50715605/utah-based-racing-pilot-killed-in-plane-crash-near-west-jordan-airport