Two planes owned and flown by UT have crashed. The first plane was a DC-3, given to UT by Sears Roebuck, which crashed on takeoff at Dulles International Airport on January 18, 1969. The UT swim team was onboard. The pilot and copilot, George Wallace and Charles Lockwood, were injured. The crash came three days after UT received the plane. UT accepted a $50,000 cash settlement from the insurance company rather than attempting to repair the plane.
The second crash was in spring 1978, when the six-seater Aero-Commander crashed shortly after takeoff from the Salisbury-Wicomico (Maryland) airport, killing four and seriously injuring a fifth passenger. The plane, acquired by UT in 1965, was taking faculty, a graduate student, and consultants from the College of Education’s School Planning Laboratory on a consulting trip with Wicomico County public school officials. Killed were the pilot, Charles Lockwood; Dr. George Trotter, director of the School Planning Laboratory; Darla Price, Trotter’s senior graduate assistant, who survived for a few days after the crash; James Knisley, a sales representative for George’s Sanitary Supply Company in Knoxville; and Andrew Smith, supervisor of maintenance and operations for Knoxville City Schools. The FAA determined that the cause of the crash was contaminated fuel. Apparently, commercial Jet A fuel was used to refuel the plane in Maryland, rather than 100 octane gasoline.