Pilot Lost in Plane Crash Into Lake

Rescuers searched until dark Sunday for the pilot of a single-engine plane that crashed into Lake Michigan about four miles from Chicago shores, authorities said.

The American Legend Cub’s pilot and passenger were returning to Cleveland from Oshkosh, Wis. -- the site of an air show earlier Sunday at which a man died in a taxiway accident.

Authorities were not linking the Chicago and Oshkosh incidents.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued the Cub’s passenger, a 49-year-old Texas man, who was floating on an aircraft cushion in the lake off Chicago’s South Side.

“He was very upset,” said rescuer John Laurie, a coxswain. The passenger and pilot had been “swimming together towards the shore,” Laurie said.

Mike Fox of the Chicago Fire Department said the passenger, who was taken to a hospital in good condition, “said the engine stopped, the plane floated for a few seconds and they were able to get out.”

The search for the pilot was to resume today.

It was unclear what the pilot and passenger were doing in Oshkosh, but the passenger was wearing a bracelet commemorating an Oshkosh air show.

In the other accident Sunday, at the annual AirVenture show in Oshkosh, a Navy warbird’s propeller sliced into a home-built airplane and killed its passenger, officials said.

The 63-year-old Canadian man was pronounced dead at Wittman Regional Airport, said Tom Poberezny, president of the Experimental Aircraft Assn., which puts on the AirVenture show.

Neither the pilot of the home-built plane nor the two occupants of the World War II-era Grumman TBM Avenger were injured, Poberezny said.

A couple died July 23 when their Europa XS home-built plane crashed on approach to the airport for AirVenture.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.