Watch That 1st Step : Pilot of Plane Caught in Wires Nearly Fell 90 Feet

After the crash landing, pilot Dean Plath unfastened his safety belt, opened the door and lowered himself on to the wing of the overturned plane.

Instead of being only a step above the ground, however, Plath found himself dangling 90 feet from earth. He was just about to slide off the wing and plunge into the darkness.

“It was at that point,” Plath recalled, “that (passenger Clarence) Ed (Washburn) said: ‘We’re in the wires, not on the ground. For God’s sake, come back in!’ ”

At his Tustin home Wednesday evening, Plath allowed that his wing walking had been “a potentially catastrophic misjudgment on my part. I just assumed we were on the ground.”

Because he was flying on instruments, Plath said, a plastic “hood” covered the windshield, restricting the view from inside. For that reason, he did not know that he was 90 feet off the ground when the plane stopped, he said.

Plath, 58, of Tustin, climbed back in and for four hours Tuesday night, he and Washburn, 67, of Whittier, stayed strapped in their seats inside Plath’s Cessna 172. Meanwhile, the aircraft swayed in its precarious perch, snarled upside down in high-voltage power lines along the approach to Ontario International Airport.

Authorities said the Cessna had slammed into the wires at 7:40 p.m. during a westbound approach to the airport 40 minutes after leaving Fullerton Airport, about 25 miles southwest.

The 4,500-pound, single-engine aircraft slid along the wires until its right wheel and propeller became entangled in the 220,000-volt transmission lines. It came to a halt and flipped over. The power automatically cut off at the moment of contact and no power outages were reported, Southern California Edison Co. officials said.

Shortly before midnight, as fuel dripped from the dangling aircraft, both men were plucked from the plane by Ontario firefighters using a snorkel, or elevating platform, apparatus. .

Plath said he took off from Fullerton intending to “get current in night flying. I hadn’t been flying at night for several years.”

When the plane snagged on the wires, “we had this sensation of tumbling,” Plath recalled.

Plath and Washburn were treated for superficial cuts and bruises at Ontario Community Hospital, where they remained for observation until Wednesday afternoon, hospital spokeswomen said.

Both fliers declined interviews at the hospital, but issued a prepared statement through the facility’s public relations office.

‘An Incredible Feat’

“We would like to express our tremendous gratitude for the people of the rescue team, who accomplished an incredible feat,” according to the statement released by hospital spokeswoman Diana Hanyak. “We would specifically like to thank Southern California Edison, the paramedics, Ontario Fire Department, Ontario police officers and Ontario Community Hospital.”

Plath and Washburn both declined to discuss what led up to the crash, saying, “We feel it appropriate that we not comment on the accident itself until we’ve had time to make a report to the National Transportation Safety Board, as required by law.”

Plath’s daughter, Judy Lowrey, 26, of Huntington Beach, watched Tuesday’s four-hour drama on television with her mother, Gloria. At her parents’ home Wednesday night, she turned to her father and said: “God got you to 100 feet off the ground, and the incredible rescue team did the rest.”

Plath said he and Washburn never doubted that they would get out safely.

“We knew it was a precarious situation, but we felt they were going to get us out of it,” Plath said.

Some Trying Moments

There were trying moments, however.

Once on the wing and alerted by Washburn not to step off, Plath said he looked down into darkness, but was still unaware that the plane was 90 feet off the ground.

“I looked down and still didn’t see anything,” he said. “Then I looked at the horizon and saw lights and slowly began to understand. I’m 58 years old. It wasn’t easy to get back in (the plane).”

Once inside the small craft’s cockpit, Plath said, he saw that the cables in which the plane was tangled were frayed and he worried that they would break.

Plath said his first concern was the possibility of fire.

“I turned off the master switch and the ignition switch,” he said. “I smelled gas. . . . I was unable to reach the fuel valve to turn it off.

“I made my decision that the safest place was on the ceiling of the back seat,” Plath continued. “I then jerry-rigged the seat belt to afford me some limited support.

‘You Let It Go’

“You reach a point,” Plath said, “when you ask yourself: ‘Have I done everything I can do?’ Then you have to let it go.”

Hospital spokeswoman Hanyak said it was at that point that Plath prayed: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Lowery, Plath’s daughter, said that to be able to see her father on television news coverage throughout the evening had been “a lot better than to drive out there and not know” if the plane had fallen. But as soon as rescue workers helped her father from the cockpit, “we got in the car and went straight to the hospital,” Lowrey said.

Once on the ground, Plath said, “it was a startling sight when I looked up and saw how little of the aircraft was secured to the wires.”

“The overwhelming emotion I felt was gratitude. Those guys (the rescue team) risked their necks for us.”

Wife Was Confident

Washburn’s wife, Betty, said Wednesday that she also watched television reports Tuesday night as her husband, a part-time flight instructor at Fullerton Airport, was upside down inside the aircraft.

“We were confident they would be all right with all that (rescue) equipment,” she said. “He (her husband) has a very safe record. His whole interest in flying is safety. I don’t know what the story is, but I’m glad it ended happily.

“I’m sure he’ll be back in the air as soon as he can,” she said.