From Hospital, Ultralight Pilot Still Advocates Craft

A day after he crash-landed while demonstrating an ultralight aircraft, George Evangelou continued to defend the small flying machines.

From his room at El Cajon Valley Hospital, the operator of an airfield for ultralights said Friday that he probably would have sustained more injuries in Thursday’s crash if he had been flying a conventional aircraft.

Evangelou suffered two compression fractures of his back when the plane crashed. His passenger, newsman Jesse Macias of KFMB-TV (Channel 8), was at Sharp Memorial Hospital Friday with a fractured vertebra.

But Federal Aviation Administration spokesman John Hull disputed Evangelou’s contention that the small planes, which are powered by 50-horsepower engines, are safer than conventional planes.

While many ultralights are being flown, they do not have certificates of airworthiness, as regular aircraft do, Hull said. The results of the FAA investigation into the crash are expected in three weeks, he said.

But Evangelou, sounding well-rested and speaking in an upbeat manner, met with reporters at the hospital and said that the small aircraft was the reason he and Macias did not receive more extensive injuries.

“The only reason that either one of us is OK is because we were in an ultralight,” said Evangelou, who added that this was his first forced landing. Evangelou said that because the ultralight has a landing speed of about 35 miles per hour, it was able to land without disintegrating, as a larger plane traveling with much greater speed might have done.

Evangelou and Macias, who was working on a story about the problems ultralight pilots face in finding landing areas for their aircraft, took off in a Challenger about 10:15 a.m. Thursday near Lake San Vicente in Lakeside.

As they were flying about 300 feet over the lake, “Something happened in the plane that stopped turning the propeller,” Evangelou said. He said he wanted to land in a concession stand parking lot near the lake but it was crowded with people.

The lake also would have made a good landing site, he said, but there was a possibility of the wind blowing the parachute over their heads while they were in the water. He also said he didn’t know if Macias could swim. So he chose to land on a hill. Macias was “cool as a cucumber” during the entire ordeal, Evangelou added.

Thursday’s accident might have been avoided if there had been more landing sites, he said. If ultralight pilots were allowed to use land in the San Pasqual area, as Evangelou this week asked a City Council committee to let him do, “It would give (the city) a chance to regulate” the aircraft, he said. The committee rejected his request.

There have been only two fatal ultralight crashes in San Diego County in five years, both caused by pilot error, he said.