Pilot Crash-Lands Plane Near Dam

A flight instructor and his student escaped injury Saturday when their single-engine plane lost power and crash-landed into a flood-control basin here just minutes after takeoff from Pacoima’s Whiteman Airport, authorities said.

The instructor, Dar Kindred, and the student, Keith Suhl, suffered minor cuts when the Cessna 182 touched down and tipped over in shallow water behind an industrial yard near the Hansen Dam Golf Course, officials said.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration were seeking the cause of the plane’s loss of power.

Kindred, a veteran instructor at SunQuest Aircraft at Whiteman, said he and Suhl were en route to Fox Field in Palmdale on a practice instrument-test flight. He said they had taken extra precautions during a preflight inspection of the plane because of recent heavy rains.

The pair took off about 11:42 a.m., with Suhl, a licensed pilot, at the controls, Kindred said. When they were about 200 feet off the ground, the engine quit.

“It just got quiet, and we both looked at each other,” he said. “We knew what had happened.”

Taking the controls, Kindred attempted to maneuver the plane toward the golf course less than half a mile away, but soon realized it did not have enough momentum to glide that distance. The only alternative was to guide the plane into the flat basin, which was coated with water, he said.