Plane crash claims life of local aviator

Poplar Bluff lost a longtime member of its aviation community on June 7, when Reggie Hopwood’s twin-engine Mitsubishi freight aircraft crashed on takeoff in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Hopwood, 58, was leaving the Sioux Falls airport when the incident occurred.

“It happened at 4:15 in the morning,” said Gary Pride, manager of the Poplar Bluff Regional Business Airport.

“His incident happened a half mile from where he started his takeoff roll. He was just getting to the speed needed to leave the ground,” Pride said. “The plane rested on the runway … he never left the airport property.”

Hopwood, Pride said, had actually left the Poplar Bluff airport two days prior to the fateful crash in the same aircraft.

“What happened in his aviation incident, it had to be something that was unrecoverable,” Pride speculated.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, Pride said, and hopefully “we’ll know in about a year.”

An expert on Mitsubishi aircraft, Pride said, noted the accident “probably had something to do with one of the engines because it’s a critical time, right when you rotate and leave the ground. It would be unrecoverable.”

The crash occurred at a time when Hopwood was in the process of transitioning his freight transportation business to the Poplar Bluff airport from its base in Memphis, Tennessee.

“His business was based in Memphis, but he was moving that business to Poplar Bluff,” Pride explained. “Reggie was building a house at Fairdealing and was going to move back from Memphis.”

Two or three of Hopwood’s planes, Pride said, were based out of Poplar Bluff, but “he told me a couple weeks ago he was going to move all of them once he got relocated.”

Hopwood, whose father many years ago ran the Poplar Bluff airport, was well known in the local aviation community.

“He was an extremely experienced aviator and was well known within the aviation community. He was well respected,” Pride said, noting Hopwood was “extremely experienced in the type of aircraft he was flying at the time.

“He was such a great aviator, and he’s really going to be missed in the Poplar Bluff aviation community.”