Plane crash: ‘I can’t believe my daughter walked away’
Bruised survivor tells her father harrowing account of fatal landing
PALO ALTO » At the start of the flight on his small private plane, the “Angel Flight” pilot who volunteered to fly a mother and daughter from Redding to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital asked if either would like to join him in the seat up front.
They both declined, choosing instead to sit together in the back
seats. The decision may have saved their lives.
The tragedy, however, was profound. Pilot W. John Spencer, 66, who retired to Placerville after spending years in San Jose, died Tuesday when his single-engine Mooney M20 crashed in a pond, a quarter-mile from the Palo Alto airport landing strip.
Spencer had assisted 75 families on 125 flights since 2014 with the nonprofit Angel Flight West, an organization that links volunteer pilots and commercial airlines with people who need air transportation to get to nonemergency medical appointments. On Tuesday afternoon, Spencer had aborted a first landing attempt and was circling back for a second when the crash occurred, officials said.
“I’m gonna have to abort this and go around,” Spencer radioed the tower, according to Air Traffic Control audio.
The tower asked if he needed any assistance, but the pilot reassured them, “Negative, I just came in too fast.”
It was his last radio transmission. Moments later, the tower shut down air traffic due to a “mishap.” “We have a crashed airplane over by the ponds,” another air traffic controller said.
The crash is still being investigated. But aviation experts say that the wind shifted Tuesday, and pilots who may have landed numerous times on the same runway were told to land in the opposite direction. It’s unclear if that was a factor in the crash.
Spencer’s widow, Grace, said on Wednesday her husband had flown into the Palo Alto airport numerous times and called him “the most caring, giving, kindest man that you would ever meet in your life.”
He had worked for the city of San Jose for 26 years as an information systems analyst.
A graduate of San Jose State who earned an MBA from Santa Clara University, Spencer also served in the U.S. Navy Supply Corps for 25 years.
She doesn’t know what could have happened to cause the crash but said helping others through Angel Flight West was his passion.
“My solace is knowing he did something he loved,” she said, “and he would be very happy to know that his passengers lived.”
Chloe King, 16, survived the accident with little more than bruising from the seat belt. She was scheduled to have a nonemergency brain surgery Wednesday, but it has been postponed until later this week, her father, Storm King, said in a phone interview from Redding on Wednesday.
Her mother, Nancy Dellamaria, 49, is expected to recover after fracturing her neck, breaking several ribs and gashing her head, he said. Other family members, including Dellamaria’s husband, Tony, were heading to Stanford on Wednesday to join the survivors.
“I can’t believe my daughter walked away basically unscathed,” King said. “It’s remarkable. The whole front of the plane is crumbled in.”
The death of Spencer, he said, is heartbreaking.
“This guy was voluntarily donating his time and money and his airplane so that people who lived a long ways away can get to important medical appointments,” King said.
King spoke with his daughter Tuesday afternoon and again Wednesday morning. Chloe’s mother declined an interview. But Chloe told her father that they left Redding in the morning for a 90-minute flight to Palo Alto. After a first attempt to land — at about 11:10 a.m. — the pilot pulled up and started to circle back. In a moment, they had crashed.
After the crash, Chloe “shook the pilot to see if he was OK,” King said. He didn’t move. The smell of gas was getting strong. “They were worried about an explosion,” King said.
Chloe gathered up her bag with her phone and earbuds and followed her mother out of a broken open door to the wing. Her mother was bleeding.
Chloe first called 911, then her stepfather, Tony Dellamaria, telling him she had survived a plane crash and was sitting on its wing. “Tony was like, you’re kidding, right?” Chloe told her father.
From shore, passersby called out to the mother and daughter, reassuring them, and calling 911, King said.
Chloe’s stepfather already has reached out to Angel Flight West, expressing the family’s sympathy and gratefulness for Spencer’s service, King said.
A statement from the nonprofit said that the staff is “deeply saddened’’ and that Spencer “will be greatly missed by the staff at Angel Flight West and his fellow volunteers.”