Pilot Killed Off Long Island Owned 2 Other Planes That Crashed

The pilot of a small plane who was killed when the aircraft crashed off Long Island on Saturday had also owned two other planes involved in crashes in recent years, one of them fatal, according to government records and accident reports.

The body of the pilot, Munidat “Raj” Persaud, was identified Sunday by New York State Police. Later Sunday, the Coast Guard recovered the bodies of two other people who were on board when the plane went down in the Atlantic Ocean near the village of Quogue.

The two passengers on the aircraft, a twin-engine Piper PA-34 flying from Connecticut to Charleston, South Carolina, were not immediately identified.

Part of the wreckage was found Saturday, and the fuselage was located Sunday afternoon. A Coast Guard spokesman, Petty Officer Steve Strohmaier, said efforts were being made to bring it to the surface.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s online database lists Persaud as the owner of the plane. State Police confirmed that Persaud, who lived in Westbury, Connecticut, and operated a flight school there, owned the aircraft.

His ex-wife, Shakuntala Persaud, said Munidat Persaud, a 47-year-old father of two, opened a flight school in 2004 called Oxford Flight Training after working as a mechanic for a succession of major airlines. Last year he opened a second flight school in Danbury, Connecticut.

“He likes to be in the air. It’s the only place he feels free, that’s his passion. It’s his identity,” Shakuntala Persaud said Sunday at her home in Connecticut. “He’s a good person.”

Munidat Persaud was listed by the FAA as the owner of at least 12 other aircraft, including the two others involved in crashes.

In one, also a Piper twin-engine airplane, crashed into a mountain in Vermont in May, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board. The pilot, who was the only person on board, was killed.

The pilot was a friend of Munidat Persaud’s.

“He cried, and he’s not going to cry in front of no one,” Shakuntala Persaud said. “That was his friend, one he trusted very well.”

The NTSB report said the pilot had been advised to postpone his flight from Burlington, Vermont, to the Waterbury-Oxford Airport in Connecticut because of weather. The report did not indicate that there were any mechanical problems with the aircraft.

In the other accident, in 2016, a student pilot flying alone was seriously injured when he missed the runway while attempting to land a Cessna at an airport in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A safety board report attributed the accident to pilot error.

Officials said the plane piloted by Persaud on Saturday left the Waterbury-Oxford Airport and made a short flight to Danbury, Connecticut. It then took off from there and was headed to the Charleston Executive Airport.

Witnesses saw the plane go down around 11 a.m. Saturday.

Peter Sartorius, the mayor of Quogue, said people at the Surf Club of Quogue called 911.

“There were a lot of responders there, including a lot of boats and some aircraft,” Sartorius said.

Persaud’s body was recovered just after noon in a debris field.

Shakuntala Persaud, referring to the earlier crashes, said her ex-husband understood that flying came with serious risks.

“He knew it could have been him,” she said. “He just didn’t know when.”