WV Press Videos

Instructor killed in crash started flying as a teen

Charleston Gazette-Mail photo by Sam Owens The Cessna 172N Skyhawk that crashed at Yeager Airport on Saturday sits in a hangar at the airport on Monday, waiting for the National Transportation Safety Board to begin an investigation into the crash. Brenda Jackson, a flight instructor, was killed in the crash. Student pilot Arrin Farrar remained in serious condition Monday at CAMC.
Charleston Gazette-Mail photo by Sam Owens
The Cessna 172N Skyhawk that crashed at Yeager Airport on Saturday sits in a hangar at the airport on Monday, waiting for the National Transportation Safety Board to begin an investigation into the crash. Brenda Jackson, a flight instructor, was killed in the crash. Student pilot Arrin Farrar remained in serious condition Monday at CAMC.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Brenda Jackson got her pilot’s license before she got her driver’s license.

She took her first flying lesson at age 14, after her she’d seen a flight instructor showing off his planes at the Beckley Mall.

“I want to do this,” she told her dad, back in 1973, according to family lore.

“Well, OK,” was all he could say.

She got her commercial pilot’s license in the late 1970s, soon after she graduated from Mount Hope High School. She was only the second woman in Fayette County ever to do so, she was told at the time.

Jackson, a flight instructor for Skylane Aviation in Charleston, died Saturday after the four-seat airplane she was in crashed on takeoff on the runway at Yeager Airport.

The other person in the plane, Arrin Farrar, 42, a student pilot, remained in serious condition at Charleston Area Medical Center on Monday.

“She loved life, she loved the Lord, loved flying, loved family…

Comments are closed.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

And get our latest content in your inbox

Invalid email address