August 23, 2015 — Bill Corbett spent decades flying his trusty Cessna 172 every workday out of Newport News and up and down the coast, searching out Atlantic menhaden for the commercial fishery.

A professional fish-spotter before retiring last year, Corbett and his aircraft flew together through storms and turbulence. Twice they almost went down in flames. Once, the little four-seater got struck by lightning.

“That airplane and I rode through some nasty stuff together,” Corbett, 63, said Thursday from his home in Poquoson. “And it held together for me. … It was a loyal machine for me, keeping me alive.”

Next Wednesday, their bond will break — literally — when Corbett watches his old Cessna swing and drop tail first from the big gantry at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton and crash to the ground.

The plane is scheduled to become the third and final crash test article for a study on emergency locator transmitters, or ELTs — the beacons that transmit a crash location to search-and-rescue crews when a plane goes down.

Read the full story at the Daily Press