It was the first of three crashes of a Bar Harbor Airlines plane, and the pilot walked away, but he would die in another Maine plane crash just two years later.

Within this televised report from August of 1976, now veteran newsman Don Carrigan tells us that the plane, a Beechcraft 99, had taken off earlier from Bangor International Airport, and was making it way to Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton, when it encountered some sort of trouble and crashed into the woods on Lamoine Ridge, about two miles from its destination.

The one and only occupant of the plane was Peter Monighetti, the pilot of the plane, who actually survived the crash with just bumps and bruises.  Mr. Monighetti would die in another plane crash just two years later while he was the airline's vice president.  That second crash which happened on May 16th, 1978, in extreme rain and fog near the airport in Trenton, would also take the lives of Thomas Caruso of Trenton, the owner of Bar Harbor Airlines, Caruso's son Gary, and the assistant pilot, Malcolm Conner of Bar Harbor.

Bar Harbor Airlines would also experience another very famous crash some nine years later in 1985, in which our young goodwill ambassador, Samantha Smith, would perish.  That plane, also a Beechcraft 99, would crash while landing in Lewiston-Auburn.

 

 

 

 

 

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