Pilots return safely

Two local pilots were home safe Monday after their plane crash-landed into woods in Bedford, Mass., and caught fire.

Robert Denaro, of 44 Pioneer Drive in Nashua, and Stephen Parsons, of 38 Holbrook Hill Drive in Bedford, N.H., were co-piloting the plane, both men said.

Both Denaro and Parsons said Monday they wanted to file their reports with the agencies investigating the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, before talking about the incident publicly.

Both Denaro and Parsons are licensed pilots, and they both worked together to land the plane at about 10:15 p.m. Saturday, they said.

The men had radioed to a control tower at Logan Airport that their plane had some sort of electrical malfunction, and they had to shut down its engine, FAA spokesman Jim Peters said Monday.

The plane glided into a wooded, residential area near Dudley Road in Bedford, Mass., police Sgt. Michael Cloutier said Monday. The plane snagged a tree that bent, and lowered it to the ground, he said.

“They must have hit (the tree) just right,” Cloutier said. “They didn’t hit real hard.”

Both men were able to get themselves out of the plane, and were treated for minor injuries, Cloutier said.

“Within minutes after they got out, the whole (plane) burned,” Cloutier said. “They were very lucky.”

The plane was a single-propeller Rockwell International Aero Commander AC11, owned by 114 Interactive Group, a company based at Boire Field in Nashua.

Denaro and Parsons were headed back to Nashua at the time of the crash.

Andrew Wolfe can be reached at 594-6410 or wolfea@telegraph-nh.com.