Report: Plane sought radar tracking shortly before midair collision

ASSOCIATED PRESS February 15, 2000

LOS ANGELES -- The fatal midair collision of two planes last week over the San Fernando Valley occurred after both pilots were assigned radar tracking codes by the Van Nuys Airport control tower.

The National Transportation Safety Board released the findings Monday in a preliminary report on the Feb. 7 collision that killed four people.

The report details the circumstances of the accident but does not assign blame.

Controllers were already tracking one of the planes -- a Bellanca Citabria -- before the crash. Moments before the collision, the other plane, a Questair Venture, had been assigned a transponder code so it could also be tracked, according to the report.

After the Questair pilot, Charles Oliver, verified the transponder code, "there was no further conversation with either plane," the NTSB report said.

Oliver may not have had the chance to enter the code before the collision.

NTSB officials declined to elaborate on the report, as did officials with the Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the Van Nuys control tower.

Both planes were required to watch for other aircraft under visual flight rules until they could rely on radar guidance by air traffic controllers.

NTSB investigator George Petterson has speculated that the pilots' views might have been obscured by their wings because one plane was a high-wing aircraft and the other was a low-wing model.

The Bellanca pilot, Thomas Quist, and his co-pilot, Kevin Kaff, were patrolling oil pipelines between Bakersfield and Los Angeles before the crash. Wreckage from the craft fell onto a golf course.

Oliver, a professional charter jet pilot, and his passenger, Jean Bustos, were headed for a landing at Van Nuys Airport. The remains of their Questair, an experimental craft, fell into trees near Interstate 5.

Some flying enthusiasts have called for more supervision over small aircraft after this crash and another midair collision last week that killed three people in a suburb north of Chicago. Many small airplanes often fly without any instruction from outside control towers.

Link

http://www.uniontrib.com/news/state/20000215-300-planescollid.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 15, 2000