October 13, Middlefield, Conn. / Cessna 152

At about 21:02 eastern time, a Cessna 152 crashed while in cruise flight near Middlefield, killing the pilot. The pilot was returning from a dinner engagement when the airplane crashed into an upsloping wooded area at an elevation of 483 feet msl. The pilot had flown 16 miles from Chester, Conn., to Meriden in order to attend a dinner engagement in New Haven. Afterward, he reportedly was heading directly back to Chester, however a route to Chester would have been on a 128-degree heading and the accident site was six miles from Meriden on a 064 heading. The pilot apparently did not obtain a weather briefing. Visibility at Chester at the time of the accident was 3 miles, with broken clouds at 500 and 1,000 feet. The pilot was an instrument instructor with more than 1,500 hours.