200 Mourn Pilot Who Vanished During Storm

Nearly 200 friends, relatives and pilots attended a memorial service in Chatsworth Saturday for a young flight instructor who vanished with a student while flying in a storm off the Malibu coast almost two weeks ago.

William M. Cody, 23, of Northridge was an instructor at Bud Walen Aviation, a flying school at Van Nuys Airport. Cody had recently graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.

As storm clouds gathered on Tuesday, Feb. 24, Cody flew a twin-engine turbo Piper Seminole from Van Nuys Airport to Santa Monica Airport to pick up Ed Grinstead, 25, of Texas, the plane’s owner and Cody’s student.

Grinstead had recently bought the aircraft in Van Nuys and was taking lessons from Cody to become certified to fly the multi-engine craft on instruments alone, with no outside visual cues, said Capt. Gordon Barnett of the Civil Air Patrol, who coordinated part of the search for the aircraft.

Experienced, Certified

Barnett said Cody was an experienced and certified instructor for instrument flying. “He was well qualified,” Barnett said. “He worked very hard on getting his ratings and keeping them.”

After practicing for several hours, Grinstead and Cody were returning to Santa Monica Airport at 6:20 p.m. when air-traffic controllers at Los Angeles International Airport lost contact with the plane. The last radar sighting of the craft was about 2 1/2 miles west of Malibu at 3,300 feet, Barnett said.

A violent thunderstorm was sweeping Los Angeles, producing waterspouts, lightning and hail. Several people reported seeing lightning strike a plane off the coast, but it was never confirmed that the Seminole had been struck.

Vessels and aircraft from the U. S. Coast Guard and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department scoured the sea west of Santa Monica and Malibu that evening and until the next afternoon, when the Civil Air Patrol and private pilots took over the search.

Sixty-seven people from the Civil Air Patrol and other volunteers continued to search for another five days, Barnett said.

Friends Search Canyons

David Crookes and Alan Dean, two of Cody’s friends from his years at Embry-Riddle, flew from Arizona to join the search, spending several days scanning the canyons of Malibu from a helicopter.

No trace of the plane or its occupants was found, Barnett said.

As mourners gathered in the parking lot at St. John’s Eudes Catholic Church in Chatsworth on Saturday morning, a tight formation of six World War II-vintage AT-6 aircraft from the Van Nuys Airport-based Condor Squadron flew overhead in salute, dispersing as they climbed into cumulus clouds gathering over the Santa Susana Mountains.

Cody started flying about the same time he started driving, at the age of 15, said Mike Sterry, an instructor at Walen Aviation and a close friend. Sterry was among several dozen pilots at the service.

Col. Angelo Porco of the Civil Air Patrol, addressing Cody’s parents and sister, said: “We will never give up on the search.”