5 Die as Plane Crashes Onto Tennis Court

A private plane carrying a Canadian family of five crashed onto a tennis court at the Newport Beach Tennis Club on Friday morning and exploded, killing all aboard and narrowly missing a tennis instructor and two students.

The plane, a twin-engine, six-seat Piper Aerostar PA-60 from Camrose, Alberta, had just taken off from John Wayne Airport at 8:33 a.m. One witness at the airport said the plane was flying abnormally low, and an engine was backfiring just after take-off. Soon afterward, smoke came from the engines.

Air traffic controllers observing the plane radioed the pilot, who responded with a clear and calm, “We have to come back,” according to a federal investigator at the scene.

No Indication of Problem

The pilot, Anthony Deis, 35, gave no indication there was any problem, and controllers received no other transmissions from him, the investigator said.

Witnesses at the tennis club said the plane was in a steep dive headed toward the clubhouse, which contained about 125 people, but then nosed straight down, and missed the building.

The tennis club is located near a shopping center and several schools. No one on the ground was injured.

Authorities identified the victims as pilot Deis, his wife Marilyn, 34, and their three daughters--Amanda, 10, Jaclyn, 7, and Kimberly, 5. All lived in Camrose, about 50 miles southeast of Edmonton.

Anthony Deis was owner of a chain of jewelry stores in Alberta, and his firm was listed as owner of the plane.

The family left Canada on March 22 for a vacation in Orange County and had visited Disneyland, according to a Deis family member quoted by Newport Beach Fire Department officials.

The family’s flight plan Friday indicated that they were returning to Alberta by way of Pocatello, Ida.

The plane crashed onto a tennis court, about 20 yards from the corner of the clubhouse, where instructor Bernie Mitton was volleying with his students.

Mitton, 34, of Irvine, who was treated for shock but otherwise was unhurt, said one of his students shouted, “There’s a plane coming!” He looked up and saw the plane falling straight down.

“I started to run into a corner but it seemed like the plane just kept following me,” Mitton said. “I ran out of the corner, and within seconds it crashed and immediately exploded and burst into flames. If I had stayed in that corner I would have been dead.

“As I ran away, it exploded behind me. You could feel the intensity of the heat.”

The plane hit with such force that only a propeller hurled to the side was easily recognizable as part of an airplane.

The remains of the plane lay in a mound at the corner of the tennis court, where the court’s chain-link boundary fence had been twisted and bent but had contained the wreckage like a safety net.

Little of the wreckage went through to the adjoining court, where no one had been playing. Miraculously, none of the wreckage was thrown to the other end of court where Mitton and his students had retreated.

The students, Bob and June Vermes of Irvine, said it appeared that the pilot was trying to steer the falling plane away from the players.

“I think he saw us and knew that he was coming toward this building,” Bob Vermes said. “He veered . . . and missed everybody.”

June Vermes said it appeared that “my husband actually was going in one direction and the plane was just veering as though the (pilot) was trying to avoid us, to miss us.”

Lois Jacobs, Ruth Bowman and Lisa Murdy, all of Newport Beach, were playing on a court about 50 yards away and saw the plane descending and Mitton and his students scrambling to escape.

The plane burst into “a huge ball of flame, then it exploded,” Murdy said. “The explosion went straight up; it didn’t spread out,” Bowman said. “That’s what saved them.”

Another of the club’s six tennis instructors, Kevin Forbes, was two courts away from the crash and said he heard four distinct explosions, each with a fireball.

Bill Parker, owner of the tennis club, said the possibility of such a crash had been apparent to him for a long time. “Every day I see these planes take off. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of what might happen.”

He said that if the crash had occurred later, all the tennis courts would have been full. “We’re just incredibly lucky no one on the ground was hurt,” he said.

Paramedics said they treated about 20 people at the club for shock but considered only four of the cases serious.

The Piper Aerostar has had a history of engine-failure accidents during take-offs and can be an unforgiving aircraft in the hands of an inexperienced pilot, according to aviation experts.

The Aviation Consumer magazine in Greenwich, Conn., said the Piper Aerostar has the highest accident rate among common twin-engine aircraft: a fatal accident rate of 3.8 accidents per 100,000 hours of flight. The rate is almost three times higher than the median accident rate of similar two-engine planes.

From 1977 to 1982, Aerostars were involved in 28 fatal accidents, and since 1983, the National Transportation Safety Board has recorded 20 fatal accidents involving the aircraft. Production of the Aerostar was ended in 1985.

Times staff writers Steve Churm, George Frank and George Bundy Smith also contributed to this story.