An investigation at a Virginia airport has revealed that a student pilot from Maryland was flying a small plane when it crashed, killing the flight instructor, Virginia State Police said in a statement Friday. The crash occurred upon takeoff Thursday afternoon at the Newport News-Williamsburg Airport.
The single-engine Cessna 172 was piloted by Oluwagbohunmi Ayomide Oyebode, 18, state police said. During takeoff, Oyebode tried to pull the craft up at too steep of an angle. That caused the engine to stall in the air, and the aircraft crashed. It had reached an altitude of about 100 feet.
Oyebode, of Hanover, Maryland, suffered serious injuries and was taken to a hospital, state police said. The flight instructor who died was Viktoria Theresie Izabelle Ljungman, 23, of Williamsburg, Virginia. Another 18-year-old male student who was on board was also taken to a hospital.
Ljungman, a Hampton University graduate, shared her love of flying on her Instagram account “viktoriathepilot” where she posted images from the cockpit. One post reveals she got her flight instructor license this April.
Charlie Hudson, a former tennis player at Hampton, told the Daily Press that he was friends with Ljungman, who had competed on the women’s tennis team.
“I remember when I first met her, that’s all she ever wanted to do. She wanted to be a commercial pilot,” Hudson told the newspaper.
Hampton University graduate Anastasiia Romanova-Hill told CBS affiliate WTKR-TV that several years ago Ljungman, a native of Sweden, reached out to her on Facebook as she was trying to determine which college to attend.
“She’s definitely a kind person who was curious and wanted to discover new things,” said Romanova-Hill.