WAYCROSS, Ga. — A deadly stretch in the skies over Florida and South Georgia started Nov. 1, when a Learjet nosedived into a Palm Beach County neighborhood, killing all nine people on board. Just last week, a local pilot in Ware County was killed in a crash soon after takeoff.
Tim Scheuing was a father, philanthropist, and IT tech turned flight instructor. No one could clip his wings. Longtime hobby pilot Edward Smith, Tim’s friend and fellow pilot, says Tim loved helping others take flight.
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“He was passionate about aviation, sharing his experience with kids and at aviation events. He would give first flight lessons a lot of times for free,” Smith said.
High school sweethearts, Tim and his wife Amanda, just celebrated 20 years of marriage. They adopted their now 16-year-old daughter Natalie as a baby. After years of praying, the couple is less than a month away from welcoming what Amanda calls their “miracle baby.”
“Met his father every Monday, like clockwork, at the local little diner down the street from the airport. So sometimes we’d be planning a flight somewhere, and he’d say, well, after breakfast,” a speaker said.
Friday morning, Smith says Tim took off from the Waycross-Ware County Airport, heading to a job on St. Simons Island. The FAA says his single-engine Beechcraft crashed during takeoff.
“Off to the left is a state prison. You can’t responsibly point an aircraft that direction in an engine failure,” a speaker said.
Tim’s crash came in the middle of a rough stretch. The FAA logged at least five crashes and emergency landings in Florida and South Georgia in one week, two of them deadly.
“A lot of the weather here is usually beautiful. And because of that, a lot of flight schools are based here so the pilots can get their time quicker than, say, if you’re in Ohio or Pennsylvania,” Smith said.
The NTSB’s preliminary report into Tim’s crash is expected in the coming weeks, but it could take federal investigators a year or more to pinpoint exactly what went wrong. Until then, Smith urges people to stop speculating.
“So the most important thing is to keep your thoughts and prayers with the pilot, their family, and let the NTSB and the FAA do their jobs,” Smith said.
Two days before the Waycross crash, the same model plane went down in the woods in New Smyrna Beach. That pilot survived.
A link to help Tim’s growing family is available on ActionNewsJax.com.
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