Dangling Plane’s Pilot Nearly Fell 90 Feet

After the crash, with his light airplane snarled upside-down in high tension wires 90 feet off the ground, pilot Dean Plath unfastened his safety belt, kicked open the door and lowered himself to the wing.

He was just about to slide off.

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

Thought They Were on Ground

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.”

For four hours Tuesday night, Plath, 58, of Tustin, and Washburn, 67, of Whittier, stayed strapped inside Plath’s Cessna 172, dangling from a precarious perch of high power lines at the approach to Ontario International Airport. All the while, Washburn hung upside-down, belted in the passenger seat.

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

The 4,500-pound, single-engine aircraft slid down the wire until its right wheel and propeller became tangled in 220,000-volt transmission lines. 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 mechanical cherry picker.

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 guy wire, “We had this sensation of tumbling,” Plath recalled.

Because he was flying by instrument control, 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.

Treated for Minor Injuries

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 men had declined interviews at the hospital, but issued a prepared statement through the hospital’s public relations office.

“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 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 of the ground, and the incredible rescue team did the rest.”

Never Had Doubts

Plath said he and Washburn never doubted 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.

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.

Ontario police officers, who were first on the scene, pleaded with the frightened pair not to jump.

‘Plane Was Rocking’

“The plane was rocking quite a bit on the cable,” said Ontario Police Department Sgt. William Sommers. “Our officers told them not to move and commenced reassuring dialogue.”

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 said. “I then jerry-rigged the seat belt to afford me some limited support.

“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 said the serenity prayer: “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.”

Family Watched TV News

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 the aircraft was secured to the wires.

“The overwhelming emotion I felt was gratitude. Those guys risked their necks for us.”

At the hospital, when Hanyak asked Plath and Washburn if they would ever fly again, “They both simultaneously said definitely, absolutely,” she said.

Washburn’s wife, Betty, said Wednesday that she also watched television reports Tuesday night as her husband, a part-time flight instructor at Fullerton Municipal Airport, sat 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.

Board to Probe Crash

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

Jim Wall, air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said there was “no indication of mechanical malfunction at this time.” The probable cause of the accident will be determined by the board in Washington, D.C., he said.

Rescuers used three cranes and a cherry picker, but moved cautiously because the trapped airplane was hanging by one wheel and it was thought that the plane had a full fuel tank that could explode if the craft fell to earth.

After four hours, with the help of rescuers working in the concentrated beam of spotlights below, Plath inched his way out of the cabin and into the arms of firefighters.

About 20 minutes later, Washburn, who had been pinned down in the rear of the aircraft, also slid out of the plane and into the cherry picker.

The aircraft was lowered uneventfully at 9:35 Wednesday morning, authorities said.