2 Killed in Lancaster Plane Crash

A flying instructor and his student were killed Monday when a small plane equipped with a safety parachute crashed northeast of Gen. William J. Fox Airfield in Lancaster.

The two men, who authorities did not identify pending notification of relatives, were practicing takeoffs and landings just before their Cirrus SR20 aircraft went down at 1:42 p.m. in what Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. William Hindman called “open desert” near Avenue F and 40th Street West.

The plane was registered to Todd Olson of Henderson, Nev., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Olson could not be reached for comment.

The plane was equipped with a parachute that can be deployed in an emergency, lowering the aircraft to a soft landing. But investigators could not immediately determine whether the parachute was deployed before the plane hit the ground or popped out after the crash, said FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer.

Witnesses told Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that they thought the chute deployed after the plane hit the ground.

Parachutes on Cirrus planes sometimes pop out upon impact, said Bill King, Cirrus’ vice president of business administration. “A little fracturing in the fuselage will cause it to go off,” he said.

King said further investigation would be needed to determine whether the pilot pulled a red handle in the cockpit that causes the parachute to open.

Cirrus planes with 55-foot-wide parachutes first rolled off the production line in 1999, and there now are about 2,500 in service. They are the only FAA-approved planes equipped with the devices.

In five previous incidents, pilots have managed to pull the lever before crashing, and their planes have drifted slowly to the ground, King said.

Nine lives have been saved in this manner, he said.

But in a dozen other cases, pilots apparently didn’t activate the parachutes, and at least a dozen lives have been lost.

“It is not an automatic system,” King said. “It requires the pilot to grab the handle and pull.”

Plane parachutes can make crashes safer, but only in select situations, said Lyn Freeman, the Los Angeles-based editor of Plane & Pilot magazine.

In instances in which the planes are too close to the ground, pilots don’t have time to deploy the chutes, Freeman said.