Two Men Die in Lancair Plane Crash South of Sisters

A Lancair turboprop kit plane crashed in a remote wooded area south of Sisters Monday morning, killing the two men aboard, authorities said late in the day, while an hours-long methodical search of the widespread crash scene for plane parts and other evidence continued Tuesday.

The Lancair Propjet turboprop crashed ?under unknown circumstances? several miles east of the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, said Federal Aviation Administration regional spokesman Allen Kenitzer in Renton, Wash.

Late Monday, an FAA spokesman revised their initial report and said two, not three people had been aboard the plane. He said the initial report to the agency had been inaccurate.

The victims were identified by sheriff?s deputies late Monday as the plane’s registered owner (and builder), Harry League, 68, of Chicago, and Patrick Franzen, 52, of Bend. FAA records showed Franzen was an FAA-rated flight instructor and ground instructor.

On Tuesday afternoon, St. Charles Health System issued this announcement:

Patrick Franzen?s friends and coworkers at Metro Aviation and St. Charles Health system were shocked and saddened by the news of his death Monday.

Franzen was killed in a private plane crash near Sisters. The cause of the crash, which also killed the owner of the Lancair plane, Harry League, is not yet known.

An employee of Metro Aviation, Franzen had flown fixed-wing aircraft for AirLink for the past decade. He was also an instructor pilot for Lancair, and had spent many hours flying the high-performance experimental aircraft, said Carl Natter, Metro Aviation?s lead fixed-wing pilot and Franzen?s supervisor.

?Pat was a dependable pilot,? Natter said. ?The crew appreciated his dedication to standardization and doing the same thing the same way every time. They knew what to expect.?

Outside of work, 52-year-old Franzen was a roller-coaster aficionado, often taking side trips to local amusement parks when he traveled. He also enjoyed working on classic cars ? including his 1960s Corvette ? and playing in a band with coworkers.

?When we had our base out in La Grande and we would have to go out there for a week at a time, we had a running joke that Pat took two days to move out there and two days to move back,? Natter said, explaining Franz was always taking his guitar and amplifier with him and sometimes a remote control helicopter he had decided to learn to fly. ?He enjoyed everything. He will be missed.?

Franzen is survived by his wife and two daughters.

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Numerous agencies responded to the crash site after AirLink spotted it from the air, along Forest Service Road 4606 (also known as the Brooks-Scanlon main line logging road) about 3 miles south of Peterson Ridge Road, or about eight miles south of Sisters, said Lt. Chad Davis.

As sheriff?s detectives and deputies began investigating the scene, Sheriff?s Search and Rescue volunteers, eventually totaling about 60, were called in for the search for evidence.

Detectives removed the two men?s remains from the scene, and Davis said Road 4606 would remain closed Tuesday as the investigation continues. No vehicles will be allowed in the area, he said, and the public is asked to stay away.

The FAA spokesman provided the plane?s tail number, N66HL, which is registered to League as the plane owner. The FAA records list an address for League in Terrebonne, but a friend said he lives in Chicago and pays frequent visits to friends in this area.

FAA records show League’s plane got its initial FAA airworthiness certificate in March of 2005 and its most recent such certificate in June of last year.

Some witnesses in the Sisters-Plainview area had thought the crash occurred at or closer to the mountains, and an air and ground search was being started when an AirLink helicopter crew around 11:30 a.m. spotted the plane’s wreckage off Forest Service Road 4606, south of Peterson Ridge Road, several miles west of the Plainview area and U.S. Highway 20.

Some of the witnesses who called Deschutes County 911 around 10:18 a.m. said they heard the sound of a prop or jet plane “in distress,” Deschutes County Sheriff Larry Blanton said. They then heard the loud sound of a plane crash and possible explosion, he said.

By the noon hour, scanner reports indicated searchers were finding plane wreckage, including a tail, off Forest Service Road 4606. A witness told deputies the plane appeared to be moving fast in a southwesterly direction.

“The crash scene is strewn for several hundred yards around the airplane’s main fuselage area,” Blanton told NewsChannel 21 at the incident command center, set up at the Sisters Rodeo grounds. “The plane is in lots of pieces.”

Gary Olsen, a nearby resident, was among those who witnessed the crash and called for help.

“My wife was standing out working in her garden back there, and she goes, ‘There’s a plane crashing!’ he recalled. “And I looked up, and I saw this black plume of smoke from a plane, just falling straight down.”

“Apparently, the plane was falling way faster than the debris,” Olsen added. “It had to be pretty big — it was glistening in the sun. There was two great big pieces of debris I saw floating down.”

“And I heard what I thought was a sonic boom,” he said. “But it was too long for a sonic boom. The explosion continued to rumble.”

“I saw a couple of big pieces of debris off the plane settle down,” Olsen said. “I kept looking for parachutes, I never saw anything.”

“It’s an ugly situation,” Olsen added. “I feel bad for the people who were in it.”

With debris scattered for hundreds of yards, the airspace over the crash site was closed while Search and Rescue aircraft surveyed the area.

The Lancair Propjet is a four-seat, pressurized, composite-material “experimental” (meaning built at least half by the owner) aircraft, powered by a 750-horsepower Walter M601E turboprop engine. It’s based on Redmond-based Lancair International’s successful kit plane, the Lancair IV.

Earlier, a Forest Service plane was taking off to assist and the Civil Air Patrol and sheriff’s offices in Deschutes, Jefferson, Linn and Lane counties also were being contacted for possible involvement in an aerial search, while witnesses were interviewed to triangulate the location the plane went down.

Due to aircraft from several agencies joining in the search, a broad swath of the Cascades had been identified as initial search area perimeters, from Mt. Jefferson on the north to South Sister on the south, but the aerial operation was called off as dozens of Deschutes County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue volunteers were being called to the crash scene to help map out and catalog the wreckage.

The search area for debris was so wide that, at mid-afternoon, deputies called for a half-dozen to dozen more rolls of crime-scene tape to mark it off.

At least 10 teams worked into the evening on searches of the area, until stormy weather prompted a call to return to base, but the work was not over.

Kenitzer noted that the National Transportation Safety Board will be the lead investigating agency, with the FAA also involved. A preliminary NTSB report is usually issued within a week or two, but it can take months to determine a probable cause of such crashes, he said.