University of North Dakota’s flight school suspends takeoffs after student killed in crash
The University of North Dakota’s aerospace school has grounded all their flights after one of their students died in a crash on Monday night.
The student, identified as Chicago native John Hauser, 19, was killed when his plane went down in a field near the town of Buxton in the northeastern section of the state. He was a sophomore at the school, majoring in commercial aviation.
Authorities who descended on the scene pronounced Hauser dead at the scene. School officials have not disclosed the aircraft that he was flying at the time of the crash. NBC News reported.
Taking into account the crash, Robert Kraus, dean of the University of North Dakota’s John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences enacted a “safety stand down,” that suspended flights on Tuesday.
“Out of respect for the family we stress that you should not speculate about this event and let the investigation takes its course,” Kraus said in an email to the school community.
“The loss of a member of our UND community affects us all,” university president Andrew Armacost added in a statement.
According to university spokesman David Dodds, the grounding of flights would give the school the time and ability to review safety protocols in addition to being able to provide counseling services to impacted members of the school.
With more than 1,800 students and 500 faculty members, the University of North Dakota boasts one of the largest commercial aviation programs in the United States.
The crash marked the first time a North Dakota plane went down since 2007 when a student and a flight instructor were killed in a crash after their plane was struck by a flock of geese over central Minnesota.
In 2000, another aviation student died in a UND owned plane in Rapid City, S.D. In that incident, police suspected that he died by suicide after being charged with his second drunk-driving offense.
Five years earlier, two students were killed in a plane that was rented by the students and a friend, when it went down over Wisconsin.
