Micron’s CEO Steve Appleton Rides the “John Denver Experience”

Steve Appleton’s company Micron sure did make some good memory chips. And it earned Steve enough dough to allow him to indulge in risky hobbies, like flying in crappy airplanes that were known to have safety issues. He crashed and died just like other rich millionaires (Steve Fossett, JFK Jr.) who have no business pretending to be pilots.

From DailyMail here:

The CEO of memory chip maker Micron died yesterday morning in a tragic accident when the small experimental fixed-wing plane he was piloting crashed at an airport. A recording of a conversation Steve Appleton had with air traffic controllers just moments before his death shows his panic as he desperately radioed: ‘I’d like to turn back in and, uh, land… coming back in’.

Mr Appleton, 51, a professional stunt plane pilot and former motocross racer, was the only person in the plane when it crashed at the Boise airport in Idaho. Trading in Micron stocks has been halted. Authorities received reports of a small aircraft that was on fire before it landed on Friday morning.

It’s not the first time Mr Appleton has been in a small plane crash, and questions have been raised in the past about whether the head of a large corporation should be engaging in such a dangerous hobby.

His amateur-built plane was a single-engine Lancair. Aircraft of this type have recently caught the attention of national aircraft safety authorities, who are in the midst of a study of their safety.

Know why so many self made millionaires die in plane crashes? Because they can afford flying lessons and get themselves a stupid airplane.