Pilot in fatal plane crash identified

Authorities have identified a pilot who died Wednesday in Woodbury County as Al Foster of Adel. Kent Wenck, the director of the Cherokee Airport Authority who is a pilot himself, says he flew to the location of the crash after he heard that a cropduster had gone down while working. He says Foster had been flying for years, but in this situation he had to get over a high line and may have hit the top of a tall tree nearby, making him stall and crash into the field. The plane went down a couple miles south of Kingsley in Woodbury County. Wenck says other aerial applicators working in the area noticed Foster hadn’t returned on schedule. Some cropdusters working out of the Cherokee airport have been spraying for aphids in the soybean fields, and he says this pilot had been working at a job near Moville. When Foster was half an hour late coming in, Wenck flew out with another of the pilots and they found the wreck in a cornfield. The Woodbury County medical examiner’s doing an autopsy.