Investigators Search for Plane Parts

National Transportation Safety Board investigators combed through the wreckage of two small planes Tuesday, looking for the cause of a midair collision that killed four people.

Investigators spent part of the day looking for missing pieces of the planes, which collided Monday morning about six miles north of Van Nuys Airport in an area just south of the Newhall Pass, a heavily traveled air corridor.

Missing parts of the Questair Venture included a wingtip and an aileron, a part of the wing used for banking and turning, said NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm.

The twisted hulk of the Questair and the burned skeleton of the Bellanca Citabria were moved late Monday to a private hangar in Compton, where NTSB officials will spend the next several months reconstructing the final moments before the accident.

Investigators also will analyze air traffic control data from the Federal Aviation Administration and information on the aircraft, and review the pilots’ backgrounds, training and qualifications, NTSB officials said.

Witnesses said the Citabria collided with the Questair and then clipped high-voltage power lines above the Cascades Golf Club before exploding in flames and landing in several pieces on a fairway.

The Questair spiraled across the Golden State Freeway and slammed into a tree at the entrance to a water filtration facility near San Fernando Road and Balboa Boulevard.

The Los Angeles County coroner on Tuesday declined to identify the victims of the crash. But according to relatives, the dead include the Citabria’s pilot and co-pilot--Tom Quist, 45, and Kevin Kaff, 22, both of Bakersfield--and the Questair’s pilot Charles Oliver, 53, of Glendora and 65-year-old Jean Bustos of La Verne.

Quist was the owner of Patroline, a company that surveys crude oil pipelines, including the Pacific Pipeline that stretches from Bakersfield to Wilmington.

The possibility that the plane piloted by Quist and Kaff was circling a construction site adjacent to the golf course when the two planes collided is also being studied by investigators.

The other aircraft, the Questair, is a high-performance kit model estimated to be worth more than $100,000. It was recently purchased from a Santa Paula commercial airline pilot and relocated to Brackett Field in La Verne, the pilot’s associates said. On Monday, it was flying through the Newhall Pass on approach to Van Nuys Airport.

Local airport officials and pilots say the pass can be challenging because of heavy air traffic. But, they noted, this is the only midair collision in that airspace in decades.

“The Newhall Pass is a busy area, but it’s been that way for many, many years,” said Randy Berg, director of operations at Burbank Airport. “I can remember flying out of Van Nuys Airport 25 to 30 years ago when that area was busier than it is now.”

Berg added that in the 1970s there were more general aviation flights from the region’s existing airports, including Van Nuys, Burbank, Whiteman and Agua Dulce, as well as others--San Fernando and Santa Susana--that have since closed.

Burbank Airport’s total flights peaked in 1978 at 293,800 compared with about 182,000 in 1998.

At Van Nuys Airport, total flights rose dramatically throughout the 1960s, the heyday of recreational flying, peaking at 618,694 takeoffs and landings in 1976, according to airport records.

The number of flights fluctuated over the next two decades as general aviation struggled with rising costs, mounting insurance rates, the recession and a slowdown in the manufacture of small, single-engine aircraft.

The trend has reversed in the last four years, rising again to more than 600,000 flights in and out of Van Nuys last year, with the greatest increase being in executive and corporate aircraft travel, according to the National Business Aircraft Assn.

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The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association advises that the airplane patrolling the pipeline is more properly identified as a Bellanca Scout, omitting Citabria. The NTSB officially refers to the aircraft as a Bellanca, Model 8GCBC.

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