2 Planes in Fatal Crash Had Contact With Airport

The two planes that collided in a fatal midair crash had both contacted the Van Nuys Airport control tower and had been assigned electronic codes so they could be tracked on radar, investigators said Monday.

The finding was included in a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board and is the first official account of the Feb. 7 collision that killed four people. It details the circumstances of the accident but does not assign blame.

The report said controllers were tracking one of the planes--a Bellanca Scout--at the time of the 9:50 a.m. accident. The other plane, a Questair Venture, had contacted controllers and had been assigned a transponder code so it could also be tracked.

It was not clear from the preliminary report whether the Questair pilot had input the code before the crash occurred or whether controllers were even tracking the Questair. NTSB officials declined comment, as did officials with the Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the Van Nuys control tower.

Both planes were operating under visual flight rules that require them to see and avoid other aircraft.

“Even though they are in contact with an air traffic control tower, the pilots still are responsible for the separation of traffic, to see and to avoid,” said Drew Steketee, vice president of communications for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn., an industry group that is not involved in the investigation.

Steketee speculated that the accident may have occurred before the pilot of the Questair had a chance to punch in the transponder code aboard his aircraft, and as a result his plane may not have been identifiable on the radar screen.

The NTSB report said that after the Questair pilot, Charles Oliver, verified the code, “there was no further conversation with either plane.”

The report said the Bellanca pilot, Thomas Quist, and his co-pilot, Kevin Kaff, were circling over a construction site looking for possible leaks in a pipeline at the time of the collision.

Oliver and his passenger, Jean Bustos, were headed for a landing at Van Nuys Airport.