Pilot Identified in Carbon Canyon Plane Wreck

The pilot of the small plane that crashed in Carbon Canyon was identified Tuesday as Gordon S. Hansen, a retired dentist from Placentia.

Hansen’s Piper Twin Comanche plunged into a hillside lemon grove Monday, hitting the ground at 100 m.p.h. and igniting a brush fire, aviation officials said. The plane had taken off from Fullerton Airport.

The coroner’s office identified Hansen, a 59-year-old financial investor, by dental records.

“He was an extremely fine person,” said Dr. Harris N. Done, an Anaheim dentist who owned the plane with Hansen. “We were very close friends.”

Done said Hansen was an excellent pilot who had owned a number of planes. He said he was puzzled by what he had heard about the crash.

“It’s so unusual for both engines to go out,” Done said. Hansen could “easily fly on one engine. It sounds like he was in a stall and began to spin.”

“He was in good physical shape, very pleasant,” said next-door neighbor Michael J. McManus. “He was a good neighbor to us.”

Hansen, who was born in Winslow, Ariz., graduated from Brigham Young University and USC Dental School, and also held an MBA, said his sister, Leland Ashby of Salt Lake City.