Feds Examine Plane Crash Wreckage; Pilots Mourned

Federal aviation investigators continued to comb through the wreckage Tuesday of a kit plane that crashed in the forest south of Sisters Monday morning, killing the two men on board, as family and friends mourned the loss and more details came to light of the plane’s final flight.

Teams from the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration were on the scene where the wreckage was found, about eight miles south of Sisters. The Lancair Propjet crashed around 10:20 a.m, killing the pilot and plane’s owner, Harry League, 68, of Arlington Heights, Illinois, and his passenger, Patrick Franzen, 52, of Bend, who flies AirLink’s fixed-wing plane and for Lancair International, the Redmond kit-plane maker.

Doug Meyer, Lancair’s sales and marketing director, declined to comment Tuesday, but told The Associated Press on Monday: “Something very strange happened. These airplanes don’t come apart. They are very strong. They don’t suffer in-flight failures.”

While the cause of the crash is under investigation, NewsChannel 21 learned more Tuesday about the timeline of the plane’s last, fateful flight, from NTSB Investigator-in-Charge Kurt Anderson.

Anderson said the plane took off from Redmond Airport at 9:04 a.m. and was aloft for about an hour, at an altitude of 10,500 feet. Radar information shows the plane then climbed another 1,200 feet before it began a rapid descent around 10:16 a.m., he said.

At that time, the Redmond tower received a nine-second radio transmission from the Lancair, but it was inaudible, Anderson said. A minute or less later, the plane crashed into the wooded area south of Sisters.

Anderson said the wreckage will be taken to a hangar in Redmond, where it can be better examined. He also said planes like this don’t have what we could consider a “black box” form of flight recorder that can withstand violent crashes, but many are equipped with instruments that have a memory investigators could recover.

NewsChannel 21 also spoke Tuesday with Scott Brunk of Newport, a life-long friend of Franzen. They grew up together in Salem, and Brunk said his friend had talked of becoming a pilot from a young age.

Both men loved fast cars and skydiving, but Brunk said his friend was more interested in flying than in jumping from planes.

Brunk said Franzen was a flight instructor and would deliver the Lancair kit planes to pilots all over the country. He also said Franzen was always concerned for his safety in the experimental aircraft.

“The first thing he always told his students was, ‘This plane will kill you’ — and sure enough, it did,” Brunk said. “Pat loved live to the max. He was always on the go — new places, new things, and every day was a new adventure.”

Brunk also told us of two incidents, including a nose-end landing Franzen was forced to make in Redmond a couple of summers ago. He also said a plane caught fire in mid-air, and Franzen was able to land it safely.

Franzen was an employee of Metro Aviation and had flown fixed-wing planes for the Bend air ambulance service AirLink for the past decade. St. Charles Health System issued a statement Tuesday afternoon, saying that his friends and co-workers “were shocked and saddened by the news of his death.”

Franzen 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 boss.

“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, 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.