Karl Rove's IT Guru Dies In Small Plane Crash

A dozen readers have submitted the story of the death in a plane crash of Mike Connell, Karl Rove's IT adviser, the man who set up and ran the gwb43.com mail server, and an important figure in GOP tech circles since 1997. The closest thing to straight reporting to be found in a mainstream media outlet is a piece from KDKA in Pittsburgh giving a detailed backgrounder on Connell's work for Rove, two generations of the Bush family, and many GOP congressmen and committees. CBSNews.com is now mirroring the KDKA reporting. Almost all the early media coverage comes from the left and some of it is frankly conspiratorial. Among the milder pieces (although it could not be called balanced) is this interview with Mark Crispin Miller, NYU professor and author of two books about the 2004 election in Ohio. Connell was compelled to testify on the day before the US election in a lawsuit involving Ohio election irregularities in 2004. Connell, an experienced pilot, died on Sunday when his plane crashed two miles short of the runway of Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio.

Comments

Re:Accident?

[BarefootClown]

[snip] We're told that his plane was running out of gas, which is a little bit odd for a highly experienced pilot like Connell

Not even remotely odd. Fuel starvation is probably the single most common cause of "unplanned landings." And I use the term "starvation" because...

when the plane went down, there was an explosion, a fireball that actually charred and pocked some of the house fronts in the neighborhood

"Starvation" means "not getting gas to the engine." It doesn't mean "out of gas," just that no fuel is being delivered. Frequently, starvation occurs when the pilot fails to switch from an empty fuel tank to a full tank.

The Piper Saratoga Mr. Connell was flying would have a tank in each wing, but would be fed from one or the other at any given time. Run one tank dry, and he'd have to manually switch to the other. If he were distracted (say, by the engine stopping), he might not have realized that he had fuel in the other tank.

According to the FAA registry, Michael Louis Connell held a Private Pilot--Airplane Single-Engine Land certificate with an Instrument Airplane rating. He was required to wear corrective lenses to exercise the privileges of his pilot certificate.

I don't have a weather report for the Akron-Canton airport at the time of the crash, but I don't think it matters. I'm willing to bet that the NTSB reports that the fuel selector valve was set to an empty tank. Just poor fuel management.