NIAGARA COUNTY, N.Y. (WKBW) — Melanie Georger was just 26 years old, she was killed in a plane crash in Niagara County over the weekend.
Georger's single-engine plane owned by Skydive the Falls crashed just before noon Saturday on the Niagara Scenic Parkway northeast of the Fort Niagara State Park. An investigation revealed that the plane had dropped off skydivers and was heading back to land when it crashed.
Georger's dad told 7 News that she was born and raised in the Town of Tonawanda. She went to Kenmore East and later graduated with a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the University at Buffalo.
The FAA’s preliminary report on the crash stated that the “aircraft crashed under unknown circumstances.”
The results of a full investigation are expected at a later date.
Timothy Campbell is a flight instructor in Massachusetts, and he was also Georger’s personal instructor in 2021 for her private pilot’s license.
“I was stunned [to learn about the crash], and I’m very rarely stunned by anything,” Campbell said, “It knocked me off my pins for a good hour or so.”
Q: Flight instructor is a pretty intimate position, right? You spend a lot of time one-on-one with people?
“A lot of time very close, they’re small airplanes, you get to know people pretty well,” Campbell said. “She moved from Buffalo to Massachusetts for work… Not knowing anybody in the area, I think she always had the passion to fly and filled her spare time by taking flying lessons… She had a quiet goodness about her, and you could sense it, we all could.”
Along with being that kind and sweet person, Campbell told me that Georger was also an excellent pilot.
“She didn’t need multiple corrections, if at all, if she made a mistake it was corrected one and done,” Campbell said. “She wasn’t rattled easily. I feel you can get rattled from turbulence or nasty weather, but I don’t remember any time she became unglued or wrapped around the axle at all.”
Another one of her flight school instructors, Zach Dorman, was unavailable to speak on camera. However, he told me that after spending more than six months training in the cockpit with her “there was never a doubt she’d pass the test,” and that “she was the brightest student I ever had, this is really a shock. She was a really wonderful person and a joy to have in flight school.”
Melanie was a 2016 graduate of Kenmore East High School.
Her senior quote in her high school yearbook is a Carl Sagan quote, “The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.”
“To her family, you raised a good girl,” Campbell said. “I’m the father of two daughters myself, when I meet a woman like Melanie, I’d tell her ‘You’re the girl any father would be proud of,’ and she was the girl any father would be proud of.”
