Modesto pilot killed in crash is remembered: ‘There was a freedom’ he found in the sky

Even as he made a career focused on the ground, as a floor-coverings installer, her father’s eyes were on the sky, Deb Flewelling said.

“I know he was in aviation more than 50 years,” she said of Leon Shaeffer, 78, the Modesto pilot killed Saturday morning at the Oakdale Airport in a fiery plane crash after a hard landing. “He loved being in the air. ... There was a freedom he found there.”

He was flying a single-engine Challenger II CWS that he’d purchased in December, Flewelling said. “He owned several planes during his adult life,” she said. “He had a longtime dream to fly the Challenger and came to the point where he realized it was now or never.”

Shaeffer lived in Modesto more than 60 years, had well more than 10,000 flight hours and used to be a flight instructor at the Modesto Airport, Flewelling said.

He was a top-notch pilot who loved introducing youth to aviation, said friend and fellow Experimental Aircraft Association member Kevin Benziger. “He was well into the high hundreds in the number of children he flew through our Young Eagles program,” Oakdale resident Benziger said.

Shaeffer never before had any incidents, Benziger said. “This is a shock to us,” he said of the reaction as fellow members of EEA Chapter 90 in Oakdale learned of his death. “I know it was a pretty devastating day for me Saturday.”

Witnesses told authorities they saw the Challenger heading east toward the airport shortly before 10:30 a.m. Saturday. They said it may have had engine trouble before it landed.

One witness said he saw the plane coming in slow before it landed near the runway’s edge. He said the plane bounced a few times, but then the pilot appeared to regain control. Then the witness heard the plane crash into a pickup parked near a hangar. The truck later was determined also to be Shaeffer’s.

A National Transportation Safety Board spokesman said Monday afternoon that determining cause of the crash could take 12 to 18 months but a preliminary report could be on the NTSB site by next week.

A March 2016 fact sheet by the Federal Aviation Administration said amateur-built and other experimental aircraft accounted for about 5 percent of total general aviation fleet hours over the previous five years but were involved in over 25 percent of fatal general aviation accidents.

“With the help of outreach, updated safety materials developed by the FAA and GAJSC industry participants, and new policies, this segment of the GA industry is showing improvement,” the FAA sheet said. “Loss of control remains the leading cause of fatal accidents involving amateur-built aircraft.”

There are a lot of reasons pilots fly kit-built aircraft, Benziger said. For one, “when you fly a certified aircraft, you cannot do anything to that aircraft. The FAA will not allow to you to alter it or even do maintenance – you have to be a certified technician to work on a certified plane.”

But with an experimental, or kit-built, or amateur-built – they all mean the same, he said – the pilot can make modifications. It’s that love of building, of working with your hands and creating something, that attracts a lot of people to kit-built aircraft, Benziger said.

“My father loved to fly and I don’t think it really mattered to him what he was flying,” Flewelling said, “but he always did have a fascination with experimental planes.”

Benziger said he doesn’t care for the term “experimental” because it sounds as though pilots are throwing together some pieces of wood, covering them with fabric and trying to get them into the air.

“You have to know what you’re doing,” he said. “With kit planes, you follow instructions and you get an FAA inspection along the way to ensure it’s being done correctly.”

And aircraft kits are exhaustively engineered, Benziger said, because no kit company wants to be accused of doing anything wrong.

Another lure of kit-built aircraft is cost, he said. “A lot of times with some of these experimental craft, is you were to buy a similar certified one, it would be 20 times the cost.”

Shaeffer is survived by his wife of 43 years, Danna, six children, 25 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, Flewelling said.

This story was originally published March 13, 2017 at 3:48 PM with the headline "Modesto pilot killed in crash is remembered: ‘There was a freedom’ he found in the sky."