Pilot’s door was open before Fullerton plane crash, investigators say

The door to a pilot’s plane appeared to be ajar as it took off from Fullerton Airport, moments before it crashed into a warehouse, killing two and injuring 19 others, according to investigators.

The Jan. 2 crash killed a Huntington Beach man, who had been piloting the plane, and his 16-year-old daughter and injured 19 workers in the facility, officials said.

The two killed were identified as Pascal and Kelly Reid.

Citing witness statements and video, investigators said the left door of the Van’s Aircraft RV-10 was left ajar after the plane had taken off, according to a preliminary report released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

A witness at the airport saw the plane go by him after takeoff, noticing that the “left door was open and up. He then saw an arm reach up and pull the door down,” according to the report. The witness assumed that the pilot had closed the door, the report says.

Modifications had been made to the door, including to the standard locking system, which affected the warning system that was designed to alert the pilot when the door isn’t closed, according to the report. The door had solid steel locking pins instead of kit-supplied aluminum pins, the report said. The plane’s UHMW polyethylene door blocks had also been replaced with chamfered aluminum blocks, according to the report.

Another witness, who knew the pilot, saw him taxi the airplane from the southeast corner of the airport’s runway, according to the report. Security video showed that the left front door was “in the down position” but was “not flush with the fuselage.”

After takeoff, the pilot transmitted a signal to the control tower for an “immediate landing” and the tower controller asked whether he could make a left turn, according to the report. The pilot reported that he would land on Runway 24, climbing to about 950 feet and completing a left turn. The plane then passed the threshold for Runway 24, and an “unintelligible transmission was heard” from the plane.

The plane crashed into the roof of a Michael Nicholas Designs furniture warehouse store, about 1,500 feet from the approach end of Runway 24, according to the report.

Other witnesses said they saw the plane flying lower than normal during its final stages of flight, the report said. The plane rolled to the left and then to the right as its nose dropped and dived toward the warehouse, “where it collided in a fireball,” according to the report. Just before the crash, the witnesses said, they saw a “white piece fall from the airplane” that appeared “panel-like” as it “floated” to the ground.