Survivor of Batangas plane crash dies

After 12 long days of struggling to stay alive, the second son of retired Air Force Gen. Edgar Calvo who sustained third-degree burns when the light plane he, his brother and four other people were riding in crashed in Batangas last May 8 died at the Makati Medical Center last Friday, The STAR learned yesterday.

Twenty-year-old Francis Calvo is scheduled to be brought to his final resting place in San Pedro, Laguna today.

Francis, an aeronautical engineer working as an ejection seat technician, was the only one who survived after the crash of their Cessna plane in Tanauan, Batangas.

He was brought to the Makati Medical Center where doctors tried to save him despite his serious injuries. He, however, succumbed to cardiac arrest last May 20, or 12 days after his younger brother Edgar Jr., along with five others, died in the crash.

The elder Calvo, currently the president of the Parachuters Association of the Philippines, said he is turning his back to skydiving, a sport which he and his two sons had enjoyed for 15 years.

Calvo’s two sons were supposed to go skydiving that fateful day when their Cessna 207 crashed some three minutes after it took off from the Baradas airstrip.

Both Francis and Edgar Jr. were bachelors planning to settle down before the year ends so they could start their own families.

Calvo said he will never skydive again, noting that his jumps have almost reached a thousand since he first did it in 1987.

Francis, he said, had had 160 jumps, and Egay, 250, thus placing them both at the level of advanced and highly skilled skydivers.

In fact, Calvo said his two sons were supposed to take an examination in order to become members of the United States Parachuters Association where he (the elder Calvo) is classified as an "expert," the highest rating given to a skydiver.