Ex-KFWB Engineer 2nd Victim of Air Crash

A retired radio station engineer from Glendale has been identified as the pilot killed Saturday when his single-engine plane crashed about 200 yards short of the Whiteman Airport runway in Pacoima, officials said Tuesday.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators said they were still looking into the cause of the crash that killed Donald Taylor, 66, and his wife, Lois, 61, the only occupants of the four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza that smashed into a fruit-juice storage apparatus near Sutter Avenue and Carl Street. Mrs. Taylor’s body had been identified earlier.

Coroner’s officials said the two died of multiple traumatic injuries. Lois Taylor, who was thrown from the plane upon impact, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her husband, who had been piloting the craft, died soon afterward at Pacifica Hospital of the Valley in Sun Valley, they said.

Investigators had initially speculated that the plane had crashed after running out of fuel as it approached the airport. Witnesses said they heard no sound from the plane, and the propeller was windmilling very slowly, which can indicate a shortage of fuel.

However, investigators said they later discovered some fuel in the plane’s gas tank.

“It’s unknown what the quantity was and we still don’t know what happened,” NTSB investigator Don Llorente said. He said further details of the investigation would be released today.

Richard Rudman, engineer manager for KFWB, where Taylor worked for 26 years, said that Taylor was a “good and careful pilot,” and that he did not think that Taylor would have allowed the plane to get low on fuel.

“I was distressed by those initial reports because it just did not sound like Donald,” Rudman said.