Chino Executive Among 3 Crash Victims

RIVERSIDE —  Federal air safety officials continued their investigation Friday into the collision of two small planes over Corona that sent flaming wreckage into a residential neighborhood and killed three men, including a local executive.

One plane was preparing to land at Corona Municipal Airport and the other was flying from Rialto Airport to Chino Airport, according to people who knew the occupants of the airplanes.

The planes collided about 3,000 feet over Corona and plummeted to earth. No one on the ground was injured, although one home and four condominium units were destroyed.

The Riverside County coroner’s office Friday identified one victim as Lee Hunter, 49, of Chino. About 10 years ago, Hunter created Advantage Air, a small aircraft-sales company based at Chino Airport, said a family friend who asked not to be identified.

Hunter also was an honorary deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. He was a member of the department’s Specialized Services Bureau, a unit through which business professionals can donate time and expertise, said spokesman Chip Patterson.

The identity of the person flying with Hunter and the question of which one of them was piloting the Cessna 310 twin-engine plane remained unanswered Friday.

The third victim, who was flying alone in a Cessna 152 single-engine airplane, was identified by friends and co-workers as the owner of a year-old flying school based at the Corona airport.

The man, a Corona resident, was a veteran skydiver and had extensive flying experience, including serving on flight crews for large aircraft flown by the U.S. Forest Service to battle wildfires, said Roger Conway, the chief flight instructor at the company owned by the victim.

The coroner’s office said Friday that it had not yet identified the victim.

The man had dropped off a student at the Riverside Municipal Airport and intended to land at the Corona airport, near the Prado flood control basin, associates said.

That airport’s single runway had been closed Thursday for construction of a nearby retaining wall, and was scheduled to reopen at 5 p.m.

The pilot had been in radio communication with ground personnel moments before the crash, waiting for the runway to reopen, when contact was abruptly lost, according to several people who heard the radio communications.

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There is no air traffic control at the noncommercial Corona airport and others like it. Pilots are directed to remain visually alert for aircraft around them, and to use a specific radio frequency when approaching the airport to announce their intentions.

An investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board said efforts are under way to check radar recordings by the Federal Aviation Administration to reconstruct each plane’s position before the crash.

A representative of an organization representing general aviators said Friday that midair collisions are rare. Warren Morningstar, spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn., said that of 35-million general aviation flights in 1997, there were 15 midair collisions with 11 fatalities.