A Canadian newspaper is reporting that the pilot of a Cessna 172 who died in unusual circumstances in a crash at Nashville International Airport early Tuesday has the same name as a convicted bank robber facing recent pornography charges who said he was embarking on a 30-minute flight. The Windsor Star says it has confirmed the identity of the pilot as 45-year-old Michael Callan. A Michael Callan of the same age “has a criminal record dating back to the late 1990s in Windsor, including a number of violent bank robberies,” according to the Star. Callan filed a flight plan from Windsor to Pelee Island, about 30 minutes away, and closed that flight plan. It’s not known if he actually landed there but sometime after 2:45 a.m. the 172 crashed at Nashville, about 500 miles from Pelee Island, and Callan died. There was dense fog at the time. It took up to seven hours to discover the burned-out 172 and authorities have said that no one heard a radio call requesting landing permission or issuing a distress call.The FAA and NTSB are investigating.
Callan was a member of the Windsor Flying Club and the club apparently knew something about the past referred to by the newspaper but decided it wasn’t relevant to his flying activities. What I did was establish that he was a pretty good pilot, Club President David Gillies told the Star. He has a legitimate pilots license and medical, a night rating, quite a few hours behind him and zero infractions while flying an airplane. In 2011 when he came back to us and asked us if he could re-join the club, the board discussed it and said well, who are we to judge? And in he comes. And he was allowed back into the club again. The paper says the bank robber Callan was also facing charges related to his openly watching porn on his computer at a library and on transit buses. The charges resulted from a crackdown on child pornography by police in Windsor.
