Pilot Actions a Mystery in Santa Ana Air Crash : Investigation: He may not have known he was following in the wake of a Boeing 757. Five on board died.

The pilot of the private executive jet that crashed Wednesday near an auto mall here acknowledged a control tower warning that he was close behind another plane shortly before the crash, saying he had it in sight, an FAA spokeswoman said Friday.

But the pilot may not have known that he was following a United Airlines Boeing 757, a much larger airplane than the 12-seat Westwind 1124A he was flying. Crash investigators believe the 757 left enough turbulence in its wake that it may have caused the smaller plane to roll out of control and plummet into a field adjacent to several auto dealerships.

The crash killed two top executives of the In-N-Out Burger chain and three others aboard the Westwind, but no one was hurt on the ground. In-N-Out President Richard A. Snyder of Newport Beach and Executive Vice President Philip R. West of Irvine had broken their own rule about not flying together, and both perished in the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board on Friday continued to focus on wake turbulence from United Flight 103, a Boeing 757 two miles in front of the Westwind, as the likely cause of the crash.

A major unresolved question, said Dr. Gary Mucho, regional director of the NTSB, is why the Westwind’s pilot--Stephen R. Barkin--was flying the aircraft below, instead of above, the glide path of the Boeing 757, as most pilots are taught to do in order to avoid a larger aircraft’s wake. Generally, the turbulence sinks after the plane has moved on.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elly Brekke said the pilot “acknowledged the controller’s statement about other traffic ahead of him, but it’s possible he didn’t know the other traffic was a 757.”

Regulations concerning air turbulence place almost all of the responsibility on the pilot to recognize the potential danger and take corrective action, rather than require air traffic controllers to issue warnings, according to copies of the regulations supplied by the FAA.

But Brekke acknowledged that, if Wednesday’s crash is ultimately blamed on wake turbulence, there would likely be pressures to change the regulations, which are somewhat vague.

Michael Deehan, an FAA flight examiner and air traffic controller in Atlanta, said Friday he had once simulated the conditions that apparently led to Wednesday’s crash and was convinced that wake turbulence could be the cause.

“If a Westwind is going slow on final approach and encounters wake turbulence, it has unique characteristics that may cause it to stall,” Deehan said. “When it stalls, it pitches down about 30 degrees, and tries to roll on its back. And there is absolutely no warning . . . no horn, no shaking, no buffeting.”

Deehan estimated that it would require a minimum of 1,500 feet of altitude to recover from such a stall, not the 1,100 feet that investigators said was available to the Westwind’s pilot in Wednesday’s tragedy.

Investigators did not release tapes of either the air traffic controller or cockpit conversations Friday, but said evidence indicates the Westwind was not told to fly at any specific altitude. Previously, NTSB investigators said that radar recordings indicated the Westwind dipped some 200 feet below the bigger plane’s flight path, which could have put it within the tornado-like wake.

There are rules requiring a four-mile separation between a small plane and a large aircraft in situations where wake turbulence is possible, but that regulation does not apply because the Westwind and the 757 are both classified as large aircraft, officials said.

The two aircraft were more than three miles apart when the Westwind was cleared to enter the landing path behind the 757, the FAA’s Brekke said, adding, “That meets all of the requirements.”

The NTSB has estimated that the Westwind eventually closed to a distance of about two miles behind the 757 just before the crash.

The NTSB’s Mucho said investigators still have not ruled out catastrophic mechanical failure as a cause of the crash. But the aircraft has a good safety record, and has never been the subject of any emergency maintenance advisories.

NTSB technical staffers were combing the wreckage Friday for clues, while their colleagues in Washington analyzed the voice data recorder from the Westwind’s cockpit. There was no flight data recorder, Mucho said.

Mucho estimated that it would take several days before a transcript of the voice recording is released. “We have to get all the parties involved to agree that it says what we think it says,” Mucho explained.

Other NTSB officials said it is rare for a plane to crash due to air turbulence from another aircraft. They did not know Friday how many crashes had been attributed to wake turbulence, but they identified two such incidents--one last year in Montana and another in Van Nuys.

The Van Nuys crash occurred in May, 1986, and killed the sole occupant of the smaller plane, John Gibson, a 37-year-old soap opera actor. Gibson’s Socata Trinidad TB20 crashed after it apparently flew into the jet wash from a C-130 military transport that was landing just ahead of him.

In last year’s crash, seven people were killed when a Cessna Citation 550 owned by the U.S. Department of Energy slammed into an industrial section of Billings after crossing the wash of another jet plane.

The NTSB’s Mucho said there was another incident this year in which a Boeing 737 following a 757 into Denver apparently was turned on its side while encountering the wake of the larger jet.

According to records supplied Friday by the NTSB, the safety agency in the 1970s recommended to the FAA that it have controllers issue special warnings about turbulence or develop methods to maintain adequate separation between aircraft, but the FAA argued that no regulation changes were necessary.

Among those killed in Wednesday’s crash were West, 37, who grew up with Snyder, In-N-Out’s president; Barkin, 46, the pilot; John O. McDaniel, 49, the co-pilot, and Richard Sims, 47, another friend of Snyder’s and a consultant to the company. The company, which issued no statements on the day of the crash or on Thursday, said Friday that it might have some comment over the weekend.

A parade of gawkers wandered past the crash site, which still smelled of jet fuel, near the Santa Ana Auto Mall on Friday. One woman left a poinsettia plant at the scene.

The wreckage was removed Thursday, but the visitors scanned the ground for scraps of evidence. An employee at the nearby BMW dealership found a curtain rod that was apparently flung from the plane on impact.

Par Akrazi, 26, said employees at the dealership were also counseled Friday evening by a therapist from the Red Cross because several had witnessed the accident and saw body parts scattered around the area.

Akrazi said he had nightmares of the scene because he raced out to douse a fire that was burning on a corpse in the street. “Last night, I woke up at 2:30 a.m.,” he said. “I keep remembering that guy.”

A friend of McDaniel, one of the dead pilots, also inspected the scene Friday. Pete Hambrick of Huntington Beach said he and McDaniel once co-owned a sailboat in Long Beach that they used to race.

McDaniel loved flying and was a former supertanker ship captain.

Friends of Richard Sims, one of the passengers who died in the crash, said he was the proprietor of a Placentia public relations and marketing firm that bears his name, and was also somewhat of an authority on baby boomers and religion who had appeared on ABC-TV’s “Nightline,” on the Cable News Network, and the “700 Club.”

Sims was also a close friend of In-N-Out President Snyder, who had chartered the aircraft, and produced a monthly video news program called “Burger TV” for the 2,500 In-N-Out Burger employees.

Sims divided his time between his public relations and marketing firm and his passion for creating marketing videos for churches.

“He was just a really good friend, sort of a teacher at times and an adviser at others,” said Bill Scherer, 27, who worked closely with Sims for four years. “I’ve never known anyone like him and probably never will.”

A native of Fort Worth, Tex., and a former minister ordained by the Evangelical Church Alliance, an inter-denominational group, Sims traveled the country with the Campus Crusade for Christ in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Longtime friend and former business partner Don Lomangino, 52, of Broken Arrow, Okla., said Sims believed traditional religion alienated people of his generation.

Dedicated to reaching his generation, Sims started his own church in the 1980s called Matthew’s Party, an allusion to a dinner hosted for Jesus by the writer of the New Testament Gospel. Described as a “church for people who don’t like church,” members met at Racquetball World in Fullerton, Lomangino said.

“People would come in their workout clothes and sit down, and he would give a dramatization or a talk,” he said.

Linking religion and marketing, he made a video seminar for churches in 1992 called “A Generation on the Doorstep: Meeting the Spiritual Needs of Baby Boomers and Their Families.” The video explained how churches could woo more baby boomers to their doors.

Lomangino said Sims had plans to host his own religious talk show on cable TV.

“He really felt pressed or led to do his own program,” Lomangino said. “He really felt like this was something God wanted him to do.”

Lomangino, who frequently visits California for business, said he met with Sims for dinner on a weekly basis.

“I haven’t met anybody that didn’t like Jack . . . made you laugh . . . He just had a tremendous sense of humor,” Lomangino said.

Sims is survived by his wife, Helen, and two children, Amy, 20, and Jon, 17.

Joyce Tewthers, a close friend who on Friday was at the family residence in Placentia answering phones, said, “I think they are still in a state of disbelief that this happened. They’re doing OK, but I still think they can’t believe it happened. It’s just shocking.”

Forest Lawn Mortuary in Covina said it has tentatively scheduled a memorial service for Snyder on Monday morning. But an official at the mortuary said details of the service have not been concluded.

A service is also expected to be held for Sims at the Neels Brea Mortuary, but it has not been scheduled. A memorial service is scheduled for West at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Rose Hills Mortuary in Whittier.

McDaniel will be cremated and his remains scattered at sea next week. A memorial service is scheduled for noon Monday at the Church of Fathers at Forest Lawn in Cypress.

Funeral arrangements for Barkin were pending on Friday.

Times staff writers Jennifer Brundin, Mary Lou Pickel and Richard O’Reilly contributed to this story.