Traffic Reporter, Pilot Killed When Light Plane Crashes

A well-known San Diego traffic reporter and his pilot were killed Thursday morning when their small plane crashed along Interstate 5 in Solana Beach, narrowly missing the very lines of congested rush-hour traffic that they were reporting on, authorities said.

Howard Glenn Kreisler, 29, a reporter for Metro Traffic Control, and pilot Douglas Smith Hayden, 30, an employee of California Wings, died instantly when their single-engine 1979 Grumman two-seater plunged into an embankment on the west side of the freeway at 7:44 a.m.

Eyewitnesses say the plane’s engine sputtered and died moments before it crashed about a quarter of a mile north of the Via de la Valle interchange near the Eden Gardens neighborhood. Hayden was apparently trying to restart the engine when the plane slammed into the ground nose-first at about 100 m.p.h., they said.

On Thursday, investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Traffic Safety Board were on the scene seeking to determine the cause of the crash.

Monica Zech, Metro Traffic Control’s director of operations, said the plane had not experienced any previous engine troubles. She added, however, that another plane leased by Metro Traffic from California Wings had been forced to make an emergency landing on Interstate 15 at Mercy Road in February because of mechanical difficulties.

Kreisler had been with Metro Traffic about 14 months and dreamed of one day becoming a television anchorman, Zech said. He appeared each day on Channel 10’s morning traffic report as well as on about six other local FM and AM radio stations throughout the day.

The light plane, which had taken off about 7 a.m. from Montgomery Field for its first radio report of the morning, was apparently circling a minor freeway traffic accident when it developed the engine trouble, authorities said.

The craft was flying in a southeasterly direction at an extremely low altitude when it suddenly banked to the left moments before striking the hillside near several rows of homes and the Santa Fe Christian Academy.

Sheriff’s investigators speculate that the plane may have been trying to glide to a landing when the pilot spotted some utility wires and veered to avoid them.

“You have to give the pilot credit,” said Deputy Larry Van Dusen of the San Diego County Sheriff’s public affairs office. “He died in the process, but he could have landed on that busy freeway or crashed into some houses--or a church or the school located just nearby.

“But he didn’t. He had control enough of his faculties to bring the plane down in the only strip of remote area in that entire location. Thirty or forty feet in either direction and a lot of people would have died either on the highway or in their homes.”

Wendy Whitchurch, a food distribution representative with the Jenny Craig weight loss firm, said she had arrived at the company’s headquarters on the east side of the busy freeway when she saw the plane fly overhead toward the west about 7:40 a.m.

“It was coasting and going really slow,” she said. “Something looked terribly wrong. The plane then flew into a bouquet of Halloween balloons before beginning to bank around.”

Whitchurch said she and two other employees then watched in horror as the plane began flying directly at them. “We grabbed onto each other and were going to hide beneath a desk,” she said.

“But then the plane suddenly did this nose-dive and crashed into the hill. Maybe the pilot saw that he was coming right toward our building and pulled up. I don’t know. It happened so quickly that all we could do was stand there with our mouths open.”

California Highway Patrolman Abie Carabajal said he and fellow Officer Jerry Gadbois were standing in the freeway’s center divider, completing paperwork on the traffic accident, when, two seconds before impact, he heard the plane fly overhead.

“The motor wasn’t running, and you could hear it sputtering as though the pilot was trying to restart it. It came right at me at first and then veered away,” Carabajal said.

The plane clipped both a guy wire and a fence lining the freeway before hitting the embankment at about a 180-degree angle, the officer said. “As soon as I heard the crash, I ran down there. But there was nothing you could do. Their skulls were both cracked.”

Witnesses said the plane came to rest at the intersection of Genevieve Street and Ida Avenue, 20 yards from the utility pole and about 100 yards from a nearby church. The wings were ripped off on impact. The fuselage also broke in two, exposing the two-seat cockpit.

“There was quite a bit of damage,” Sheriff’s Deputy Van Dusen said. “You almost couldn’t tell what kind of plane it was. All you could tell that it was some kind of craft, and that it had a single engine.”

Officer Carabajal added: “The weird thing was it didn’t burn. There was no explosion. The plane just hit the ground and broke apart. But there was the smell of fuel all over.”

The officer said scores of motorists witnessed the crash, and many jumped from their cars to run to the roadside. “You had to tell them to just keep moving, to get back into their cars and just keep moving,” he said.

Fred O’Donnell, public affairs officer for the Federal Aviation Administration in Los Angeles, said investigators were on the scene to determine if the pilot violated any Federal regulations that might have led to the crash.

An investigator from the National Traffic Safety Board was also on hand to determine the cause of the crash. He expects results in 30 to 60 days, he said.

A spokesman for the San Diego County medical examiner’s office said autopsies on the victims will be conducted today or Friday.

Meanwhile, several radio producers, general managers and traffic reporters who worked with Kreisler said Thursday that they were stunned by his death.

“You think about things like this when you see them get into a plane day after day,” said Anthony Veitiello, a producer-engineer for Metro Traffic Control in Hollywood who had worked with Kreisler.

“I mean, it’s a risk and believe me it’s talked about. It’s not taken lightly. When you’re flying 1,800 feet above the ground, it’s a risk. We knew Howard, so this is a very quiet place today.”

Steve Springer, a traffic reporter for Airwatch Traffic and Kreisler’s competitor, denied that fear of such accidents constantly preys upon the minds of traffic reporters.

“You don’t think about dying every time you get into a car, do you?” he said. “There are a lot of people who make their careers flying planes in and out of San Diego every day.

“To take the tack that this is a dangerous business and that we’re all afraid of it is like going back to the 1940s.”

Hal Brown, director of operations at XTRA-AM, called Kreisler an ambitious young man “who wanted to hear his voice on the radio very badly. We don’t like to hear about this happening one bit.”

Dan Erwine, a producer and host at KPBS radio, which also used Kreisler’s traffic reports, said Kreisler had a wit that rarely made it on the air in his swiftly spoken reports.

“His humor was legendary,” he said. “He was a funny guy, and sometimes his humor would leak out when only the jock (disc jockey) could hear it. He used to joke about a guy named Kreisler (sounding like the car company Chrysler) doing traffic reports.

“Lately, he started calling himself Sparky, and sometimes I would slip and mention that name on the air. But mostly he was a professional. He trained other traffic reporters, and when I heard a strange voice I would always listen and hear Howard’s voice in the background, coaching them on.”

Houston, Tex.-based Metro Traffic Control, with branches in 26 cities nationwide, moved into San Diego in 1988 to compete with Airwatch Traffic, Aero Traffic and the Automobile Club of Southern California traffic service.

Kreisler was one of three traffic reporters for the service, and his voice soon became a companion to rush-hour motorists with his bird-dog warnings about twisted tie-ups and places to just stay away from.

Metro Traffic Control director of operations Zech said Kreisler was doing commercial voice-overs and attending San Diego City College last year when a friend told her “he had a guy with this great voice.”

“Howard wanted to get into broadcasting,” she said. “He was thrilled to do his work with Channel 10, because that’s where he wanted to end up.”

Metro Traffic Watch plans to start a scholarship fund in Kreisler’s name at the college, she said.

Thursday morning, Kreisler’s last contact with his boss came moments after he and the pilot took off from Montgomery Field just after 7 a.m. “He said was going to check out the traffic backup associated with the freeway wreck,” Zech said. “And that was the last we heard from him.”

A short time later, workers picked up reports about a plane crash on the police scanner, Zech said.

“Howard was a professional, and he was always concerned about safety,” she said.

Dave Butler, general manager of California Wings, an aircraft rental company based at Montgomery Field, described Hayden as “a good, responsible pilot.”

A 1983 graduate of National University, Hayden had worked for California Wings for just over a year, Butler said. “He had a thousand-plus hours as a pilot,” he said. “And we’ve never had any troubles with that plane.

“We just don’t know what happened up there.”

Hayden, the son of Harvey S. Hayden of Escondido, was a former Air Force pilot.