Veteran Pilot’s Fatal Crash Puzzles Friends

Bill Melly spent Friday searching his mind for a reason why his friend Howard Culbertson’s plane might have crashed during a landing at an Albuquerque airport, killing the 73-year-old Newbury Park man and his wife, Marilyn.

But try as he might, there were no obvious answers. Culbertson was an experienced pilot. Around the Camarillo airport, where he kept his home-built Thorpe T-18 in the hangar of the Ventura County Experimental Aircraft Assn., he was well respected as a man who knew his plane inside and out.

He had logged 2,200 flight hours, most of them in the little two-seater he had built in his garage. A former electrician, he could fix just about anything on the single-engine plane, identical to Melly’s own experimental airplane.

“He was a very careful pilot,” Melly said. “I’m just racking my brain, trying to figure out what happened. What could have happened? I just feel so bad about it.”

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday they still have no idea what caused Culbertson’s plane to crash at the Double Eagle II Airport just after noon on Wednesday.

“We could not find anything mechanically wrong with it,” said investigator Hector Casanova.

The Culbertsons left their Newbury Park home Tuesday, flying from Camarillo to the Laughlin/Bullhead City Airport on the Nevada-Arizona border. They planned to hop from one small airport to another on their way to a family reunion in Missouri. Before she left, Marilyn Culbertson dropped by the house of her neighbor, Richard Wilson, with a package for another neighbor. She told Wilson she was looking forward to doing a little gambling in Laughlin.

The couple loved to travel, friends said. They had just come back from a tour of Russia. Together, they had crisscrossed the United States, exploring the East Coast and the Midwest in their little plane. They sat side by side and shared a love of the plane. Melly said Marilyn had helped Howard build it back in 1972.

“I think she had her head right in there holding on to the rivet board for him,” Melly said.

Culbertson also once built a replica of a vintage sports car.

“He was very handy,” Wilson said. “He could tackle just about anything.”

The couple are survived by two sons, Randy of Newbury Park and Jim of Los Angeles. Neither could be reached Friday for comment.

As friends lingered over sad thoughts of the couple Friday, they remembered one thing best--the Culbertsons’ fervent enjoyment of flying.

“I think all of us feel that they enjoyed what they were doing and if it was going to come to pass, that is the way they would have wanted it,” Wilson said.

Casanova said he has requested radar and air traffic reports for the time of the crash. The Double Eagle II Airport has no control tower and there were no eyewitnesses to the crash, but Casanova said radar records should allow him to pinpoint the exact time Culbertson’s plane made impact. He has also ordered a complete set of temperature and wind readings from the weather service.

“Weather could have been a factor,” Casanova said. “But I have too many facts to gather to say what the cause was yet.”

Temperatures were in the mid-80s at the high-altitude airport when the plane went down. The hot, thin air could have diminished the lift in the wings and the engine’s power, experts said.

Casanova said he plans to file a preliminary report on the accident Monday. He said he is also awaiting autopsies and toxicology results on the couple.

The air safety expert said Culbertson’s plane was last inspected in February and appeared in good condition. The Newbury Park man’s flying record is clean, he said.

The fact that Culbertson was flying a plane he had built was not considered a factor in the accident, Casanova said. Experimental aircraft--the term used to describe planes built from plans or kits--are no more dangerous than commercially built planes, he said.

“We don’t see any more accidents with experimental airplanes,” he said.

The local chapter of the experimental aircraft association will hold its regular meeting this morning, said member Nathan Rambo. The group will begin its meeting with a eulogy for Culbertson and begin making plans to honor him with a missing man formation at his funeral, which has yet to be arranged.

“Sometimes the air is cruel,” Rambo said.