Pilot Leaps to Death as Crash Kills Passenger

A pilot whose plane developed engine trouble jumped to his death Wednesday evening when his aircraft plummeted nose-first into a field in Calabasas, killing a passenger.

The single-engine Marcheti SF-260 hit the ground and exploded in flames at about 5:15 p.m., witnesses and authorities said.

Witnesses said the pilot was practicing aerobatic stunts--including flying upside down and loops--when the plane’s engine failed. The pilot restarted the engine briefly and regained altitude, but it failed again, the witnesses said.

Mark Erhardt, who lives in an apartment building about 200 yards from the field where the plane crashed, said he and his wife were walking their dog when they witnessed the crash and the pilot’s leap.

“I was watching the guy do air acrobatics. He was flying upside down, and then he went into a back roll. At the top of the back roll, the plane stalled,” Erhardt recalled. “At about 3,000 feet he restarted the plane and brought it back up to try to level it out. But it went into a tailspin.”

Erhardt said that as the plane dived earthward, the pilot “leaped out of the plane. It was a frantic attempt to save himself.”

The pilot, whose name was not released, landed about 20 feet from his craft and was killed on impact, witnesses and authorities said.

The passenger was burned beyond recognition, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies said.

Tom Vaughan, a contractor who said he has been working on a housing development in the area, said he saw the same plane practicing air stunts there several times a week.

Sheriff’s deputies said the air space over the brushy field is a popular place for stunt pilots to practice. But Vaughan said he recognized the plane that crashed because of its distinctive brown and green camouflage paint.

“You could hear he was trying to get those engines started; it was really frightening,” Vaughan said.

The plane was registered to a physician, said Deputy Dean Scoville, but the owner, whose name was not released, was not in the craft.

The plane took off from Santa Monica Airport at about 1 p.m., Scoville said.

The plane crashed in an empty field at Lost Hills Road and the Las Virgenes Road near Malibu Creek State Park.

On Monday, two people were killed in a plane crash in Ojai when a Citabria stunt plane crashed.