Friends Join to Aid Plane Crash Victim

He designed NASA spacecraft during the week, played in a symphony orchestra on weekends and was on the threshold of possibly becoming an astronaut. But instead of heading into orbit, Jordan A. Kaplan is fighting to stay alive today after surviving a fiery light plane crash that killed a woman companion.

“The two loves in his life are music and flying,” said David Bendett, executive director of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra, in which Kaplan has been a violinist for about five years. “He would always be talking about flying here and flying there.”

Kaplan, 32, of Pasadena, remained in critical condition Monday at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital, where he is being treated for third-degree burns over 92% of his body.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office was awaiting dental records to confirm the identity of the woman killed in the crash.

The crash occurred about half a mile from Whiteman Airpark in Pacoima, where Kaplan and the woman took off in a vintage single-engine plane shortly before 3 p.m. Saturday. Authorities believe that Kaplan was piloting the 1946 Ercoupe 415 when it crashed into a vacant house.

An investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board spent Monday studying the plane’s wreckage in an effort to determine what went wrong. Meanwhile, Kaplan’s friends and family remained by his bedside as blood donations were sought from the public.

As a mechanical engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Kaplan helped design instrument platforms on the Cassini spacecraft, which is scheduled to be launched on a mission to Saturn this fall, said Mary Beth Murrill, a JPL spokeswoman.

Before the crash, Kaplan was getting ready to move temporarily to Cape Canaveral, Fla., to prepare the spacecraft for launch.

“He is a very talented mechanical engineer,” Murrill said.

In addition to his engineering and musical careers, Kaplan had been an astronaut candidate. He was eliminated in a late round of astronaut selection and was planning to reapply, said Paul Hardy, a fellow engineer on the Cassini project.

Before joining JPL in 1991, Kaplan had received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Tufts University in Massachusetts in 1986 and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990.

Many of Kaplan’s fellow orchestra members donated blood for him over the weekend. When the orchestra plays a concert Sunday, its performance will probably be dedicated to Kaplan, Bendett said.

Kaplan also plays in several string quartets, had taken up swing dancing and is known as a gourmet cook.

“Jordan is one of those people who does not need three hours at the end of each day to sit around on the couch and watch TV,” said Randy Lindemann, a friend and fellow engineer at JPL.

“We’re all really grieving over this,” Bendett said. “It’s just a terrible, terrible tragedy, and we’re just hoping and praying he’ll pull through.”