The aircraft crash of Simi Valley brings popular kit aircraft into the spotlight

The residents of Simi Valley held the small plane, which circles over the neighborhood on Saturday, part of an air exhibition.

The plane seemed to fly irregularly and pulled closer to the ground. Then there was the loud boom when the kit-built aircraft switched a house in the High Meadow Street in the neighborhood of Wood Ranch. According to the authorities, two passengers and a dog on board the aircraft died on site.

The fatal crash, the second with this model aircraft in five months, throws a headlight for such experimental and amateur-made kit aircraft, its accidents and the overall process for winning the regulatory approval to fly the aircraft with passengers on board.

According to experimental aircraft enthusiasts, there are currently around 30,000 amateur -built aircraft in the United States. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the total number of registered air -worthy aircraft has tripled since the 1980s. Backing up a precise number of such levels that are used is a moving goal, since the database for the pursuit of new registered aircraft and older aircraft is not always up to date.

KIT aircraft are becoming increasingly popular because, according to enthusiasts, they are much cheaper than factory-built aircraft and give the community the feeling of adapting their own way to heaven.

The FAA said that one-engine vans RV-10, an aircraft with a fixed wing that drove from Lancaster on the way to Camarillo on Saturday.

The FAA website shows that the plane was registered with Paul Berkovitz from Westlake Village.

Medical examiners have not published the names of the two people who died in the crash. Berkovitz is listed as a former owner of Camp Bow Wow Agoura Hills and Bow Wow Bungalow in Burank.

He announced on social media that he is passionate about the support of animals in overcrowded accommodations and would fly dogs from animal shelters to new houses for a non -profit organization called Pilot N Paws.

“It is the most gratifying flying that you will ever make as a pilot,” he told Pet Vet Sales, a Pet Business Broker and consulting company. The company also found that Berkovitz enjoyed flying with its amateur-built RV-10 aircraft, the same type that had crashed in the Simi Valley.

Shortly before the crash, the control tower at Camarillo Airport tried to contact the pilot. He did not answer immediately and when he spoke, his words were mutilated.

Finally his voice came on when he said: “I need a few vectors. The plane keeps turning me on.”

The air traffic controller repeatedly asked the pilot to deliver its height, Audio said to LiveAtc, but there was no clear reaction.

“They are lost radar contact,” said the traffic controller, which means that the tower no longer received the monitoring data used to determine the position of the aircraft.

The authorities have not published the pilot's identity or his passenger.

The official cause of the crash is examined by the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Authority, which was commissioned to investigate aircraft accidents and accidents. A preliminary report will be given in the next 30 days and a final report will probably be published in the next one to two years, a spokesman for the agency.

While there are still many strangers about the crash, the officials have confirmed that the plane is built an experimental or amateur kit. According to a spokesman for the experimental Aircraft Association, an international organization of aviation enthusiasts, around 1,000 kit-built aircraft from FAA are considered to be dignified every year.

From October to May there were fewer fatal accidents, the experimental categories and amateur-construction aircraft comprised than in the same period of the previous year, 12 compared to 18, according to the available data of the FAA.

The Vans RV-10, which collapsed into the Simi Valley on Saturday, is the same aircraft model that crashed into a warehouse in Fullerton on January 2. He killed the pilot, his 16-year-old daughter and injured 19 people on site. The company that sells the KIT aircraft, van's Aircraft, is based in Aurora, Ore.

Before the crash in January, the experimental category after the experimental aircraft association recorded a decrease of around 25% in the event of fatal accidents compared to a decade ago. From 2005 to 2014, according to the available data, there were 527 fatal accidents in the category of domestic category compared to 329 from 2015 to 2024.

According to the FAA, an amateur-built aircraft fulfills the definition when more than 51% of the level are manufactured and compiled by a person or a group for educational or leisure purposes.

Some enthusiasts buy kits with already produced aircraft parts and others choose to buy or manufacture their own parts and assemble.

Often these homemade aircraft are put together in home employees for around $ 10,000 and $ 100,000 in home garages, depending on the aircraft species that a hobbyist wants to fly, such as the experimental aircraft association.

A FAA inspector or a certified inspector is then meticulously passed through the construction company's tree trunk when the parts have been assembled and how long it took. The client has to compile photos and a timeline that shows how the plane was put together.

A pilot then has to complete a pilot between 25 and 40 hours of test flights over unpopulated areas to ensure that all parts work properly in accordance with the guidelines of the experimental aircraft. A pilot can only bring passengers after this phase.

Vans RV-10 is one of the most frequently used and demanding kits on the market, said Sean Elliott, Vice President of EAA, at the beginning of this year after the crash in January.

“They make most of the leisure fleet of amateur -built aircraft and offer their builders and pilots a lot of support,” said Elliott.

After the crash on Saturday, EAA spokesman Dick Knapinski warned that every plane crash must be seen as its own unique incident.

“As with motor vehicle accidents, the causes of these breakdowns have 50 or 100 or 1,000 miles almost largely different circumstances,” he said.