Pilot Killed as Plane Nose-Dives Into Fullerton Home

A small private plane nose-dived into a Fullerton home Tuesday, killing the pilot and engulfing the house in flames, the latest in a series of crashes that have plagued airfields in Southern California communities during the past decade.

The four-seater Beechcraft Debonaire was registered to Sherman Oaks physician William Garvin Lofton. Orange County coroner’s officials had not identified the pilot as of late Tuesday night. But friends who rallied to the Lofton family’s side confirmed that preliminary findings by the coroner’s office indicated he was aboard the plane.

No one was in the house at the time.

While the cause of the crash remains under investigation, the fiery scene in the residential neighborhood is bound to renew complaints of safety problems surrounding Fullerton Municipal Airport, where 28 accidents involving 12 fatalities have occurred in the last 15 years.

“We’re going to petition City Council,” said Richard Fowler after the airplane crashed into a home 60 yards from his. “There are too many houses around here for a purely recreational airport. . . . We’re going to have to start doing something. Every time you hear the planes, you expect them to go into the walls.”

Rod Propst, manager of the Fullerton airport, defended its safety record, saying that the airport sees 200 to 250 successful takeoffs and landings every day. But some residents said they remain worried, especially given previous crashes.

When the plane clipped a power line and nose-dived, Donna Cowserg was across the street at her daughter’s home, taking care of her two grandchildren.

“I thought at first it was a car crash. . . . I heard the kids screaming,” Cowserg said. “First I couldn’t see the kids, and I panicked. I’ve already thanked God for saving my children and grandchildren.”

Cowserg said she now fears for the safety for her daughter and son-in-law. Southern Californians who live near other local airfields share her concerns.

Ted McConkey, a former Burbank city councilman and a longtime critic of Burbank Airport, said the Fullerton accident underscores the inherent danger of airfields in urban communities.

“There’s not a lot you can do,” McConkey said. “It’s like automobile accidents. Studies show that most occur close to your home. It’s the same with airports. . . . If you have a lot of small planes, the odds go up of incidents like this.”

Since 1981, there have been three fatal accidents at Burbank Airport involving private planes, killing a total of nine people, an airport official said. At Van Nuys Airport, 18 aviation accidents since 1985 have killed eight. In that same period at Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, there have been nine accidents and six deaths.

Several people in two Pacoima homes escaped injury in September 1997 when a small plane on a training exercise crashed just after takeoff from Whiteman Airport. But two people in the plane were killed and a third was seriously injured. The National Transportation Safety Board found that a mechanic had given wrong instructions to the pilot on positioning a fuel switch.

That crash was the sixth in the neighborhood in 18 months and prompted Los Angeles city and county officials to call for an investigation into safety issues involving the airport.

The neighborhoods around Santa Monica Municipal Airport--Mar Vista, Venice, Santa Monica and West Los Angeles--have experienced at least 12 crashes and seven fatalities since 1985. At Long Beach Airport, eight have died in four crashes during the past 15 years.

The most recent crash near the Santa Monica airport was two years ago, when a single-engine Cessna ran out of gas and landed upside down on the athletic field at Daniel Webster Junior High School in West Los Angeles. It occurred after school and no students were injured, although the plane’s four occupants were hospitalized.

The last fatal crash involved a single-engine Piper Saratoga 32A that slammed into the garage of a Sunset Park home in 1994 and killed the pilot instantly. The plane ran out of gas shortly after takeoff.

The neighborhoods that surround the Santa Monica airport are much closer to the airstrip than at most other airports. Decades ago, aircraft manufacturers Hughes and McDonnell Douglas constructed the houses so that workers could get to the airport with ease. Today, neighbors say they fear the prospect of a crash on their street.

“It’s one of the really, really scary things about living here,” said Venice resident and airport critic Lewin Wertheimer. “There’s absolutely no buffer zone. There are more jets there now and they take off at speeds that are really exaggerated.”

Despite such fears, Airport Manager Robert Trimborn said accidents such as the Fullerton crash are comparatively rare, considering the amount of air traffic.

Before Tuesday, the most recent crash near the Fullerton airport was in 1995, when a plane smashed into a townhouse complex at 6:35 a.m., killing both men aboard. The accident also killed a resident of the townhouse.

“I felt these deaths were inevitable,” a former mayor of Buena Park said at the time. “I’m surprised we haven’t had more accidents and deaths over the years.”

In Sherman Oaks, family members and friends gathered at the Lofton home Tuesday night. Lofton, an obstetrician who worked for Kaiser Permanente in Panorama City, had flown to Fullerton to visit his daughter’s godfather.

His aircraft, built in 1984, was seen flying about 100 feet over the Buena Park Police Department building just before the crash. The plane should have been flying at 1,100 feet, airport officials said.

Moments later, the pilot radioed an emergency broadcast, telling airport officials of an “open-door problem but declining to report an emergency,” according to Federal Aviation Administration officials.

But the open door probably would not have caused the crash, airport officials said.

“One open door is not a significant event,” Propst said. “You just go back to the airport and shut the door.”

The pilot tried to turn the plane back toward the airport but its tail caught an electric power line about 1 1/2 miles southeast of the runway, city officials said.

“We assume that it was trying to land at the airport,” said Fullerton city spokeswoman Sylvia Palmer. “We have reports of a mayday from the pilot, then the radio went dead.”

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Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein, Miles Corwin, Martha Willman, Meg James, Scott Martelle and Times correspondents Monte Morin, Luladey B. Tadesse and Greg Risling contributed to this story.