Plane crash claims Ojai couple
by Lenny Roberts

The bodies of Charles and Barbara Curtis were found Friday in the wreckage of their single-engine Grumman Tiger AA-5B that had sometime earlier slammed into the side of fog-shrouded South Mountain near the Santa Paula Airport. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
The wreckage was reportedly spotted by an employee of Ojai Oil Co. at about 10:15 a.m., who called authorities after believing that the four-seater airplane was not there the day before. The impact had detached both wings of the aircraft, but the fuselage and tail section remained mostly intact.
Charles Curtis, 74, was the former general manager of the Ventura River County Water District and 13-year veteran of the agency that supplies water to parts of the unincorporated areas of the Ojai Valley, including Casitas Springs and a portion of Oak View. In February, he was presented the Ventura County Special Districts Association's General Manager of the Year award.
Matt Bryant, who recently was named VCRWD general manager, remembered Curtis as a dedicated predecessor.
"Chuck was one of the greatest, and a stickler for detail, I can tell you that," Bryant said. "He was a very smart and brilliant man who was self-taught about the water industry, and had been a pilot for more than 30 years."
A year after his retirement in December 2000, Curtis was appointed as a VCRWD board member.
"Once he retired, he did fly quite a bit. He'd always come in and joke about where he and Barbara would fly to have lunch," Bryant recalled. "He came in the office on Thursday and talked about leaving Friday for Minden, Nevada to visit friends."
Eyewitnesses reported seeing the Curtises at the Santa Paula Airport Friday morning where the weather at the time was overcast, lending credence to the theory that Curtis may not have been able to see South Mountain after takeoff due to poor visibility.
Doug Dullenkopf, president of Screaming Eagles Aircraft Sales, remembers seeing Curtis' plane on the taxiway between 9:30 and 10 a.m., and did not recall anyone taking off prior to that. He said the weather at the time was overcast with a 500-foot ceiling.
"I definitely saw the plane on the taxiway, and delayed my flight out because of the ceiling," Dullenkopf said, adding that he took off about an hour after that. Even though he described the ceiling as good when he departed the runway, he flew for about an hour, remaining in the airport's traffic pattern.
"Mrs. Curtis always sat in the car and liked to read while he liked to talk airplanes," Dullenkopf said. "I knew him to be a very nice likable and intelligent person. It kind of surprised me that he did what he did."
Rowena Mason, president of the Santa Paula Airport, confirmed seeing Curtis' plane take off, but did not recall who was at the controls. At the time the plane departed, Mason said there was some blue sky visible through the cloud cover, and she estimated that the ceiling had lifted to 1,000 feet.
"I could not see the top of the mountain where they impacted, but it was starting to clear," Mason said, adding that she did not see anyone take off prior to Curtis, but heard that someone did an hour earlier.
An instrument flight rules or IFR clearance is required to take off with a low ceiling, but since the airport has no control tower, the determination of safety based on weather conditions is left to the pilot in command. And a filed flight plan, although mandatory before departure in IFR conditions, is urged by the FAA for any long-range flight.
Jerry Snyder of the Federal Aviation Administration's Western-Pacific Region office said Monday that "As far as we can tell, there was no flight plan filed."
FAA investigators were still at the crash site gathering information Monday, and Snyder confirmed that Curtis was instrument-rated, meaning that he had been trained to and could legally fly in areas with limited visibility, and that he last had a medical examination required for pilot recerification in February.

© 2002 The Ojai Valley News

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