Planes Found Deathtrap in Canyon

The three small planes were flying in tight formation Sunday, with veteran lead pilot Arpad Bottlo heading up a narrow canyon, when a pilot behind them realized they were in trouble.

“Can you make it out?” the trailing pilot radioed Bottlo.

“I don’t think so,” Bottlo replied.

Seconds later, Bottlo’s plane crashed into the steep wall at the end of the canyon, killing him and his two passengers, Jesus Lizarraga and Robert Maddux. A moment later, a second plane a few feet behind Bottlo’s crashed into the same canyon wall, killing the pilot, Steve Herman, and his two passengers, Les and Gloria Stobbe.

The third plane in the formation, a high-performance, kit-built aircraft, was able to climb steeply and clear the ridge at the end of the canyon. Five planes in two trailing formations also reacted in time to avoid disaster.

This account of the crashes in the rugged mountains of southeastern Santa Barbara County came Monday from David Gibbs, pilot of the last plane in line, as National Transportation Safety Board investigators tried to determine what went wrong.

The victims were identified by Gibbs; Craig Schulze, a passenger in one of the other planes; and several friends and relatives. Official identifications have not been released.

NTSB investigators said it was too early to determine the cause of the crashes. But Barry Schiff, a retired Trans World Airlines pilot and air safety consultant, said the lead pilot may have made a fundamental error.

“One of the first things you’re taught is that you never fly up a canyon if you can’t see your way out,” Schiff said. “If the walls narrow down or it turns out to be a box canyon, there’s no way out of there.”

Gibbs said the first three planes were only a few yards apart, the second and third each slightly behind, slightly to the right and slightly above the one ahead.

“In formation flying, you put all your trust in the leader,” Schiff said. “He’s the one who determines where you’re going and you keep your eye on him, you don’t look around.”

It wasn’t as though Bottlo lacked experience.

Born in Hungary in 1943, he had been flying since the age of 16 and served as a pilot in the Hungarian Air Force, said his widow, Valerie Bottlo. After immigrating to the United States in the mid-1960s, he qualified as a pilot, earning both his commercial pilot’s rating and an instrument rating. He eventually purchased a Beechcraft Bonanza, a peppy, single-engine plane he kept at the Million Air facility at Van Nuys Airport.

“He loved flying and he loved that airplane,” said Doug Butler, Million Air’s vice president of operations.

“Flying was his life,” Valerie Bottlo said. “He was doing what he wanted, and I take solace from that.”

Lizarraga, one of Bottlo’s passengers, was described by Schulze as a “very sharp” pilot in his 20s who spent a lot of time at Whiteman Airpark in Pacoima, working on his plane.

Robert “Mad Dog” Maddux, 48, a resident of North Hills, a pilot and a bachelor, owned PFM designs, an embroidery design business in Van Nuys. His brother, John Maddux, said Mad Dog got the nickname years ago while working at a restaurant “and it just stuck.”

He wasn’t an angry man, the brother said. “He was a very gregarious, outgoing person.”

“Life won’t be the same without Mad Dog,” said a friend, Eric Alton.

Herman, the pilot of the second plane, another Beechcraft Bonanza, was 39, with a wife and three teenage daughters. He was a project manager for Owens Evans and Son, a construction company in Newhall.

Evans said Herman was a quiet man who took his work and flying very seriously.

“We used to kid him, try to loosen him up,” Evans said.

Leslie Stobbe, 67, and his 70-year-old wife, Gloria, the passengers in Herman’s plane, lived in Granada Hills. She was a homemaker; he was a retired woodshop teacher at a San Fernando Valley high school.

Their son, Forrest Stobbe, said his father had learned to fly as a boy and flew crop dusters in Minnesota before moving to California.

“He loved to fly,” Forrest Stobbe said. “He was a good pilot, a good mentor and a great father.”

The eight planes took off Sunday from Van Nuys Airport and were headed for the small airport at Oceano, near Pismo Beach. The group had reserved tables for lunch at Old Juan’s Cantina in Oceano.

Eva Verdin, whose father owns the restaurant, said she thought it was strange that they failed to show up. “We always looked forward to them coming,” she said.

The crashes occurred about 500 feet below the top of a 6,000-foot ridge near Mt. Ardo, in the Los Padres National Forest.

On Monday, a team from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department set out on foot for the remote crash site to recover the bodies and gather evidence for investigators.

Schulze, a pilot, said most of the eight pilots who flew together Sunday were members of a loose-knit group of experienced airmen who liked to hang out together on weekends.

The group was known as “The Bonanche Boys” because of the planes they flew--Bonanzas based at Whiteman Airpark and Piper Comanches based at Van Nuys Airport.

“We really scrutinize each other’s performance to make sure that the next time we go out, we’ll be better pilots,” Schulze said. “We take it very seriously.”

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Times staff writers Sufiya Abdul-Rahman, Andrew Blankstein, Richard Fausset, Richard O’Reilly and Manuel Gamiz Jr. contributed to this report.