Bad landing in Baltimore

Baltimore’s old, venerable Memorial Stadium gets a dent in its upper deck 48 years ago today as a single-engine Piper Cherokee crashes into the empty stands, injuring the pilot and three passengers.

The crash occurs only a few minutes after the small plane buzzes the stadium during the final seconds of the 1976 NFL playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Colts — a Sunday afternoon game with more than 50,000 fans in attendance.

The Steelers’ 40-14 rout of the Colts may well save lives on this day as disheartened Colts fans begin to leave the stadium long before the end of the game – and the subsequent crash.

The plane’s pilot is 33-year-old Donald Kroner, who a day earlier is fired from his job as a bus driver with the Maryland Transit Administration.

Kroner ends up with a two-year prison sentence that later is reduced to three months.

Planes and buses – and his personal misdeeds with both – are a recurring theme for Kroner, who earlier is arrested for dropping toilet paper from another small plane he is flying over the suburban Baltimore restaurant of former Colts linebacker Bill Pellington.

Seems Kroner is upset with being told to leave Pellington’s restaurant.

Less than four years after crashing his plane into Memorial Stadium in 1976, Kroner is arrested for stealing a Greyhound bus at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C.

Prior to that, Kroner is a flight instructor and – really, you cannot make this stuff up – an air traffic controller.