Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Missing 87-year-old pilot remembered
Close friends say he was a ‘brilliant man’ and storyteller
BOCA RATON — The search for an 87-year-old pilot and marathon runner from Boca Raton ended Tuesday without any sign of him or his missing plane.
Brendan Spratt left Spruce Creek near Daytona Beach on Feb. 24 in his single-engine 1991 Lancair 320 plane. He never arrived at the Boca Raton Airport, typically an hour’s flight.
Spratt was a local running legend, said his friend Carol Virga, who co-owns the Runner’s Edge in Boca Raton. One year, the two running partners ran in the Boston Marathon and then just a week later in the London Marathon.
“He won his age group. I don’t remember his exact time, but it was under three hours and he won the age group of 55 to 59, male,” Virga recalled. “He actually beat me with a time in the high-two [hours].”
Mike Downey, another close friend of Spratt’s, credits the fast-footed engineer for helping him train for the Boston Marathon. They would run from Boca Raton to Delray Beach and back.
“He had to slow down for us. He was an exceptional runner, even though he was 10 years older than us,” said Downey, who now lives in Venice, near Sarasota. “He’s going to be missed.”
Originally born in Ireland, Spratt received a scholarship from the British government and learned to fly as a young man, according to Downey.
“Brendan was without exception
one of the truly great, great storytellers,” Downey said. “During our long runs, he would hold forth and I would listen.”
As years of running began taking a toll on his body, Spratt’s hobbies shifted, and he built the Lancair from scratch, Virga said.
“He was a brilliant man. A genius,” she said. “It’s a pretty scary thing to fly a plane,
number one, but then to build your own and trust that you’re going to take it up and it’s going to work.”
Spratt worked as an electronics engineer manager for Bendix Corporation, an avionics manufacturing company, at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport before retiring.
The Federal Aviation Administration lost detection of the aircraft shortly before 12:30 p.m. Friday when it was about 17 miles southeast of Boca Raton. The Coast Guard searched about 15,955 square miles from Miami to Fort Pierce and did not find any debris.
“The decision to suspend a case is never an easy one,” said Lt. Shawn Antonelli, a command duty officer for U.S. Coast Guard District Seven. “Our greatest sympathies go out to the Spratt family during this time.”
Spratt does not have an active pilot certificate, according to FAA records. The records do not say why he lost his license, but an FAA spokeswoman said his license was revoked in February 2015.
FlightAware, an online flight-tracking service, shows no record of last week’s flight, saying the single-engine Lancair last flew in December 2020.
With a few limited exceptions, most planes are now required by federal law to have tracking technology that would show their flight path on FlightAware and various other flight-tracking services. Spratt’s son, Brendan Sean Spratt, could not be reached by phone for comment Tuesday.
“It’s sad,” said Virga, the co-owner of Runner’s Edge. “But at least you think he was flying in his plane and that’s what he truly loved to do and all of us should be that lucky to go, doing something we enjoy.”