EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — A flight instructor and a student pilot had an altercation inside the cockpit of a small plane, and the instructor was unable to regain control from the trainee before the plane crashed near the headquarters of a military jet engine manufacturer, killing the student, a U.S. official familiar with the investigation into what happened said Wednesday.
The crash appeared to have been a suicide attempt by the student, and terrorism was ruled out, the official told The Associated Press.
The Piper PA-34 Seneca crashed with the two men aboard during a training flight Tuesday in East Hartford near the headquarters of Pratt & Whitney while returning to Brainard Airport in Hartford, authorities said. The flight instructor was badly burned but survived.
The instructor described the student pilot as disgruntled about learning to be a pilot, the U.S. official said.
The flight instructor is Arian Prevalla, and the student was Feras Freitekh, said a law enforcement official.
Prevalla’s social media pages indicate he’s president of the American Flight Academy and a managing member of the Hartford Jet Center, both based in Hartford. The pages say he is from Albania and lives in Hartford.
On LinkedIn, Prevalla said he received a bachelor’s degree in aviation science from Mountain State University, a now-defunct university in Beckley, W.V.
Public records show Freitekh received a private pilot certificate last year from the Federal Aviation Administration. They also indicate he lived in the Chicago suburb of Orland Hills since 2013, but authorities there said that there was no record he ever lived in the village but that he received mail there at the home of a friend of his father, who worked for a container company in a nearby town.
Safety officials said the FBI was taking over as lead investigator of the crash because of indications it was an intentional act. The National Transportation Safety Board said its initial investigation indicated the crash was deliberate.
