Man who built crashed plane recalls sale to young pilot

LOS ANGELES — A small airplane that crashed into the ocean off the California coast Sunday was constructed piece by piece over nearly a decade, one of tens of thousands of home-built aircraft that are part of a high-flying hobby taking off across the country.

Federal investigators said they believe four people were aboard the single-engine Cozy Mark IV when it went down in the evening just south of San Francisco. No survivors were found and only one body had been recovered from the waters near Half Moon Bay and identified as of Friday.

The names of the pilot and two other passengers were not released. The plane was registered to an Oakland-based company called Winged Wallabies, Inc., according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

There have been no official indications of what went wrong, but a witness reported hearing an engine losing power and cutting out.

Thane Ostroth, a retired dentist who began building the aircraft in 1999 and flying it in 2008, said he sold the plane last year to a young, experienced and enthusiastic pilot from Australia for around $100,000, which is about what he estimated went into the project over the decades.

Ostroth said the buyer, in his late 20s, knew a lot about planes. He landed the plane perfectly on his first test flight, which is not easy to do.

“I told him, ‘That was well done,’ ” Ostroth recalled. “He said, ‘Thank you. I’ll buy the plane.’ ”

Authorities have not said whether the plane’s owner was among those on board.

Ostroth said he heard about the crash in an online chat group for pilots and builders of Cozy aircraft, a class of planes constructed by individuals rather than mass-produced by companies.

He said it was “traumatic” to know the plane he had spent so much time on had crashed with people on board.

Like commercial aircraft, all home-built planes are required by the FAA to be inspected annually for air worthiness. Cozy aircraft have the same safety record as commercially built planes of similar size, said aeronautical engineer Marc Zeitlin, who consults with the National Transportation Safety Board on crash investigations involving Cozy aircraft, including this one.