Local News in Brief : Fullerton : Cause of Wayne Crash Listed as Undetermined

After a two-year investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board has been unable to determine the cause of a single-engine plane crash that killed popular radio traffic reporter Bruce Wayne moments after takeoff from Fullerton Municipal Airport in 1986.

Wayne, 52, died when his blue-and-white Cessna Cardinal crashed into a tractor-trailer rig. The final report by the safety board listed the cause of the crash as “undetermined.”

But it listed as contributing factors to the crash “improper in-flight planning,” “inadequate airspeed” and Wayne’s blood-alcohol level. An autopsy by the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner’s Department determined that Wayne had a blood-alcohol level of 0.04%--the level at which a pilot is considered legally intoxicated under Federal Aviation Administration guidelines.

Wayne’s wife, Lois, reportedly told safety board investigators that her husband had consumed two glasses of wine and gone to bed by 9 the night before the accident. Coroner’s officials said later that Wayne’s body would have metabolized two 4-ounce glasses of table wine by midnight.

In the agency’s final report on the crash, the five-member safety board found no mechanical problems with Wayne’s aircraft, according to safety board spokesman Michael Benson.

Wayne, who flew for radio stations KFI and KOST, was one month short of completing 25 years as a flying traffic reporter and had logged more than 30,000 hours in the air.