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Two pilots in fatal crash remembered as cautious

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Two pilots in fatal crash remembered as cautious

Saturday, August 02, 2008

By Jonathan D. Silver, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

John Linden

On Thursday morning at 7:52 a.m., Simmon Linden watched from her Washington home overlooking the county airport as her husband, John, took off in a small plane with his friend, Roger Bock.

They were in Mr. Bock's Lancair Legacy, a two-seater known as a "homebuilt," which is just what it sounds like -- a plane painstakingly assembled by amateurs instead of made at a factory.

The men would often take to the skies for fun with the Washington Flyers' Club, sometimes traveling to faraway breakfast spots to meet fellow members. But Thursday's destination was special: Oshkosh, Wis., for the 56th annual Experimental Aircraft Association convention.

"He was so excited and so was John Linden about going out to Oshkosh. He spent months getting ready to go, and he bought this plane about a year and a half ago in Oregon," Mr. Bock's wife, Karen, said yesterday from their Carnegie home.

The pair arrived at the airshow, but as they tried to land at Wittman Regional Airport around 9:30 a.m. local time, the plane's left wing dipped and caught the ground. The aircraft flipped and came to rest about 150 feet away.

Mr. Bock and Mr. Linden, two men joined by their love of aviation and known to their families as cautious, careful pilots, died together in the crash, leaving their spouses baffled.

"I'm just so very puzzled as to what could have happened because they were such good pilots," Mrs. Linden said yesterday.

"These guys, honestly, were the nicest two men you could ever meet and they were the most careful men you could ever meet," Mrs. Bock said.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were on scene and released little information.

But Joseph C. Bartels, chief executive officer of Lancair International Inc., the company that manufactures the airplane kits, visited the crash site and offered his theory about what happened.

"There was no failure of the aircraft. All pieces were there. It was nothing more than a stall spin, which happens in landing situations when the pilot's attention is diverted," Mr. Bartels said. "This gentleman ended up letting the plane get too slow."

Both widows said they also had heard talk of the plane stalling.

The safety board will not issue a preliminary report until next week, and a final report will likely be months away.

Mr. Bartels said he thought contributing factors were the high volume of traffic and energy of air traffic controllers rapidly firing off instructions at the airshow, known as the EAA AirVenture. He described Oshkosh as a "difficult environment."

"What happened here is a classic example of individuals who come to Oshkosh," Mr. Bartels said. "They're so interested in getting here that they have no experience in going into a high-traffic volume area. There's a natural amount of apprehension and fear."

Last year, the one-week program attracted 560,000 people, said Dick Knapinski, a spokesman for the Experimental Aviation Association. More than 10,000 planes fly into the region for the show, he added.

Mr. Knapinski said the crash happened a good distance away from the main show area.

It appeared that Mr. Bock, 62, was probably the pilot of the dual-control craft. Mrs. Bock, 63, said her husband had a heart attack a year ago, but "he was doing just fine."

Mr. Bock, an engineer, had flown since 1968, his wife said. He bought the Lancair Legacy already built but unpainted and unfinished inside.

She said he had been to the Oshkosh show before, as had Mr. Linden, 56, a salesman who held both a pilot's license and a certificate for repairing experimental aircraft.

"It was always his dream to fly. My husband was a good pilot. In fact he has a plane of his own, which is still housed at the hangar," Mrs. Linden, 53, said. "Roger was an excellent pilot, very conscientious, particular about keeping his airplane up to spec."

Owners of the nation's 30,000 homebuilt planes take great pride in their crafts, of which a majority must be assembled by the builder's own hands.

They are inspected and certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. Some handle slightly differently from their manufactured counterparts, Mr. Knapinski said, such as by going faster. Some experimental pilots feel safer in planes they've assembled themselves.

"One builder told me, 'It's my butt 3,000 feet above the ground doing 150 miles an hour. I'm going to make sure every bolt is put on properly,' " Mr. Knapinski said.

Both widows described flying as their husbands' passions.

"My husband was a perfectionist about everything he did, and the only thing I can say is that at least he passed away doing something he loved," Mrs. Linden said.

Jonathan D. Silver can be reached at jsilver@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1962.

First published on August 2, 2008 at 12:00 am