Plane Crash on Islay Hill

Foggy, night conditions and the victim's inexperience likely contributed to the accident just minutes after takeoff
By Sarah Linn
The Tribune

Poor visibility and inexperience may have hampered the Fresno man killed when his small airplane crashed into a hill minutes after taking off from San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, federal investigators said Tuesday.

Heber Jesse Meeks Jr., 44, was piloting the single-engine, low-wing plane around 9:50 p.m. Monday when it smashed into the fog-shrouded top of Islay Hill off Spanish Oaks Drive, sheriff's Sgt. Rick Neufeld said.

Fuel tanks on either side of the craft sparked twin blazes that destroyed most of the plane and burned about one-eighth of an acre of brush, said Wayne Pollack, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

The probe has yet to determine the cause of the crash, Pollack said, adding that investigators failed to find a recording device in the wreckage.

"We (did not) receive any radio or distress call from the pilot or anyone else," he said.

Meeks had recently received his private pilot's license, Pollack said.

According to Pollack, business associates drove Meeks to the airport sometime after 9:15 p.m. Monday so he could fly home after a work-related trip.

It was a dark, starless night. A layer of clouds hovered about 800 feet off the ground, reducing forward visibility to as little as one-quarter mile.

Islay Hill is 777 feet high.

Despite the weather, Meeks opted to fly visually without instruments to help guide him, Pollack said. Instrument flying rules or, IFR, are required in inclement weather by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Local pilots said that decision showed Meek's inexperience.

"It put him in danger and everyone in danger who was flying," said Air San Luis president Al Yecny, who certifies pilots for private and commercial licenses. "They have instrument rules for a reason."

Private helicopter and airplane pilot Wolfgang Kaml agreed.

"The problem is, if you have the foggy conditions, you see black," said Kaml, who lives in the 4000 block of Spanish Oaks Drive. "Clouds look black. Ground looks black. You can't tell the difference."

According to Pollack, Meeks crashed into Islay Hill on his initial ascent, about one mile east of the airport. The Fresno man was pronounced dead on the scene, sheriff's officials said.

Witnesses in the residential neighborhood reported hearing a plane overhead, then seeing a fireball and tall red flames as the craft crashed on the hilltop.

At the San Luis Obispo airport, only a few employees working for a fueling contractor witnessed the crash, said Craig Piper, airport operations supervisor.

The airport's traffic control tower closes at 8 p.m., Piper said, and the public-use airport doesn't require pilots to report when they arrive or leave.

"There're so many of them," he said. "They fly in at all different hours coming and going. It'd be difficult to have a process to keep track of them all."

Monday's incident marks the third plane crash in the county this year, following Cal Poly professor Kurt Colvin's emergency landing May 7 in the university's soccer field.

The county's last fatal plane crash occurred in February 2003 when two Santa Maria men died after their Piper PA-30 Twin Commanche nose-dived into a cabbage field near Division Road and Highway 1 in rural Nipomo.