Plane in O.C. Crash Had ‘Foreign Object’ in Engine

Air safety investigators have found traces of a “foreign object”--a foam rubber seal--inside one engine of a Piper Aerostar that crashed on a Newport Beach tennis court March 31 moments after taking off from John Wayne Airport.

A Canadian family of five died aboard the twin-engine plane, which nosedived into a court at the Newport Beach Tennis Club and exploded in flames.

Gary Mucho, regional manager of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Monday that investigators found evidence of the foam rubber device in the turbocharger of the Aerostar’s right engine.

“We know how it (the device) got there and we know where it came from, but there are a few more unanswered questions that we’re pursuing,” Mucho said .

Mucho said that the foam rubber material was found when NTSB investigators tore down the plane’s right engine earlier this month and added: “It was a damned good piece of investigative work.”

“We have been doing some testing. . . . We’re pursuing this lead. It’s not supposed to be there,” Mucho said of the foam rubber. He declined to name the device or describe its normal function, saying “It’s too soon to say anything more about this.”

But George Heath, an investigator with the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, said such foam rubber is used to seal an Aerostar’s alternate air inlet door outside each engine. “There are no foam rubber applications in aircraft engines,” Heath said. The alternate air inlet is used when an engine’s primary inlet is iced over or otherwise blocked.

The NTSB’s Mucho said the foam rubber was detected inside the engine by means of spectral analysis, a process in which chemists pass light through the material to be analyzed. Determination of the wavelengths at which light is absorbed can reveal the identity of some components of the material. The tests were conducted at a local laboratory, which Mucho declined to identify. He said more information may be available later this week.

Aviation experts have said the Aerostar can fly on only one engine but that doing so requires a skilled pilot. So far, investigators have not said whether engine failure caused the crash, and if so, which engine was involved.

Earlier this month, investigators focused on repairs that were made on the plane while it was parked at John Wayne Airport. Owner-pilot Anthony Deis, 35, had asked that an oil leak be checked out, but an investigator for the Canadian Aviation Safety Board has said that he saw records connected with the repair work that showed “no discrepancy” or problem was found by the mechanics who checked for the leak.

Officials at Martin Aviation, where the plane was serviced, have declined to comment since the crash.

Two minutes after taking off from the airport for a return trip to Canada, the plane went down in the Newport Beach neighborhood of Eastbluff, narrowly missing several people on the club’s tennis courts. No one on the ground was hurt, but several people were treated for shock. Witnesses said the plane was sputtering and not gaining altitude properly as soon as it left the runway.

Deis, the pilot, was attempting to turn his plane around after radioing that he had to come back to the airport. He was an experienced pilot and the millionaire owner of three jewelry stores in the Canadian province of Alberta. Also killed in the crash were his wife Marilyn Aletha, 34, and their daughters--Amanda Lynn, 10, Jaclyn Dawn, 7, and Kimberly Lisa, 5.

The family was on vacation and had visited Disneyland.