• Pilot landed without injury
• Authorities call search for student's body a 'recovery' mission

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 23:14 EST, 29 March 2013 | UPDATED: 00:53 EST, 30 March 2013

Authorities in southeastern Tennessee are searching for a man who was thrown from an experimental aircraft while he was learning to fly from an instructor.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that police in Collegedale and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office on Friday were searching the ground for the man, who has not been identified.

Collegedale Municipal Airport employee Lowell Sterchi said the man was being trained by an instructor in his Zodiac 601 aircraft at about 2,500 feet when the canopy came off.

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The man's seat belt was not fastened and he was thrown out from the plane over the East Brainerd and Apison areas of the county

The instructor who landed the experimental plain had no serious injuries

The man's seat belt was not fastened and he was thrown out from the plane over the East Brainerd and Apison areas of the county.

'The people inside the plane were not wearing seat belts," EMA director, Troy Spence said. 'So when they lost control of the plane, in an attempt to regain control of the plane, the passenger was ejected.'

WRCB reports that the Zodiac 601 belonged to Clarance Andrews, 82, who also built the plane.

He died in a plane crash last December near the Collegedale airport.

The student pilot purchased it from his family earlier this month.

Authorities consider the search for the man's body a 'recovery' mission

Sterchi said the instructor, who Sterchi would not identify, landed the plane and was not physically hurt.

Sterchi said the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been notified.

'I would think that it's probably a recovery at this point, be we are taking it very seriously and we're going to do everything we can,' Spence said.

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