Jeff Cole; Aerospace Editor for Wall Street Journal

Jeff Cole, a well-respected aerospace editor and reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was killed Wednesday in the crash of a small plane outside Denver. He was 50.

Cole, who according to the Journal was on a reporting assignment, was a passenger in a jet piloted by Michael A. Chowdry, chairman and chief executive of Atlas Air Inc. Chowdry also died in the crash and subsequent fire, which is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Paul E. Steiger, the managing editor of the Journal, said Cole was “one of the star reporters and leaders on the staff.”

“He had just boundless energy for the story,” Steiger said in a statement on the Dow Jones Web site. “He could break stories that no one else would dream of breaking.”

According to a press release from Atlas Air and a story from Associated Press, the L-39 Czech Jet Trainer took off from the Front Range Airport for a 30-minute flight but crashed within minutes north of Interstate 70, about six miles southeast of Denver International Airport.

A native of Butte, Mont., Cole received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Montana in Missoula. He also attended the University of Missouri on a Davenport Fellowship for business and economic reporting.

Cole began his journalism career while at the University of Montana as a freelance reporter for a local newspaper. He joined the staff of the Missoulian covering city and county government before becoming a business reporter and later an editor. After working at papers in Everett, Wash.; Tacoma, Wash., and St. Paul, Minn., Cole joined the Journal in 1992 as a reporter in the Los Angeles bureau covering the aerospace and defense industries. He moved to the Washington, D.C., bureau as the national aerospace reporter in 1997 but left briefly to work at the Seattle Times. In 1998, he resumed his position, directing the Journal’s aerospace coverage and reporting on it as well.

Chowdry, 46, a native of Pakistan, grew up in England. He learned to fly after moving to the United States in the mid-1970s. He founded Atlas Air, which operates a fleet of Boeing 747s that fly cargo for major international air carriers, in 1992.

Cole is survived by his wife, Maria, and two children, Angela and Greg.