quote:

Originally posted by Puckpilot78:
to jump to the conclusion that it was suicide seems quite a leap to me at this point.

Oh, come on: Jumping to conclusions is the only exercise some people get.
(With credit to the unknown wit who first came up with that observation. )

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

The 414 has the worst single engine performance of any of the 400 series Cessnas.

Have you flown a 411?

Yeah, I think the 411 has the top spot as the worst. I never flew one as most had already crashed by the time I started flying piston twins.

I am reading that the pilot did not file any flight plan. My money is on disorientation followed by loss of control, over-stressed airframe (G forces) causing inflight break up.

quote:

Originally posted by Top Gun Supply:

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

The 414 has the worst single engine performance of any of the 400 series Cessnas.

Have you flown a 411?

Yeah, I think the 411 has the top spot as the worst. I never flew one as most had already crashed by the time I started flying piston twins.

I am reading that the pilot did not file any flight plan. My money is on disorientation followed by loss of control, over-stressed airframe (G forces) causing inflight break up.

Something doesn't smell right. IMC and no flight plan? Do we know whether the pilot was instrument rated?

Re engine-out in a 411, this model had marginal rudder in terms of controlling yaw, which might be part of the reason that there weren't many remaining when you started flying that type of airplane. The 414 had (has) significantly better rudder.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Re engine-out in a 411, this model had marginal rudder in terms of controlling yaw, which might be part of the reason that there weren't many remaining when you started flying that type of airplane. The 414 had (has) significantly better rudder.

http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_...FILE/A7CE_Rev_49.pdf

The 402, 411, 414, and 421 all have a Vmc within a few knots of one another, gross weights about the same, and fly about the same.

The biggest thorn in the heel of the 411 was the geared engine.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
The "more to the story" will be interesting if it comes out. Sounds like maybe the daughter knows but is not talking publicly.

Not sure how it plays with the plane crash. But the lying about being a cop is interesting. Getting a pension from CPD?

Maybe CPD-Sig has some info? Surely there is scuttlebutt in "the city"?

Maybe a "retired CI" of "the unit" still on the payroll? Would explain being able to afford a private plane

We have zero record of him at all. Never was on Chicago Police, and the pension board has no record of him either.

Reports are saying he was in the restaurant business.


The only thing we know for sure is:
He's dead.

The link has a photo of his bogus CPD badge.

https://www.latimes.com/local/...-20190208-story.html

Pilot had been disciplined for dangerous flying, lying years before Yorba Linda crash

By MATTHEW ORMSETH and RICHARD WINTON
FEB 09, 2019 | 7:40 AM

Years before his plane plunged into an Orange County suburb, killing him and four others on the ground, Antonio Pastini was disciplined twice by federal regulators for flying in dangerous conditions and lying about his credentials, records show.

A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration told The Times on Friday that Pastini had twice submitted name changes to the agency, changing his name first in 1991 from Jordan Albert Isaacson to Jordan Ike Aaron, then in 2008 to Antonio Peter Pastini.

His license was suspended twice by the FAA when he was named Jordan Isaacson, according to records kept by the Library of Congress. In 1977, records show, he lost his license for 120 days after flying from Las Vegas to Long Beach in cloudy, icy conditions and lying to an air traffic controller about his credentials.

He falsely told the controller he had an “IFR clearance,” an administrative law judge wrote, meaning he had both the instruments and training to fly in low-visibility conditions.

“In short,” wrote the judge, Jerrell R. Davis, “he allowed his motivation to reach Long Beach to dictate that the flight should be made and continued.”

The disregard for airspace rules posed “a potential threat to himself, his passenger and other users of the system,” Davis said.

Three years later, his license was suspended for 30 days after Davis, who again was adjudicating his case, found his plane was behind on inspections, carried only an expired temporary registration and was leaking hydraulic fluid from a brake, records show.

The leaking brake and other technical problems made the plane “unairworthy,” Davis said.

The FAA confirmed to The Times that the pilot in the two incidents was Pastini, adding that the agency was not aware of other disciplinary actions against him.

Sunday afternoon, Pastini took off from Fullerton Municipal Airport in his Cessna 414. About 10 minutes later, his plane broke apart and showered a Yorba Linda neighborhood with burning wreckage. Pastini, 75, was killed, along with four people in a home that was struck and set on fire by the debris.

Investigators have not said what caused the crash. Sources have told The Times that they have no evidence the crash was anything but some type of accident and that there were no signs of foul play.

Investigators recovered credentials and a badge that led the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to identify Pastini as a retired Chicago police officer. His daughter, Julia Ackley, also described Pastini as a former Chicago cop.

Days later, Chicago police said Pastini never worked for them. The revelation casts into doubt two decades of interviews Pastini gave with newspapers in Nevada, where he lived and owned restaurants, describing himself as a veteran of the Chicago force.

He recounted to the Reno Gazette-Journal in 1997 a rollicking adolescence in Chicago, marked by rumbles between his Italian clan and the neighborhood Germans. They were all, in his own words, “bad kids.”

"We were a pretty well-organized, greased little group of thugs,” he said.

Despite his rough-and-tumble youth, he told the newspaper, he joined the Chicago police and served for 17 years before retiring in 1986 at the rank of detective sergeant.

Ackley, Pastini’s daughter, declined to speak to a reporter about her father’s name changes.

Pastini appears to have lived in Illinois, at least for a time. His 1980 discipline from the FAA was mailed to an address in Skokie, a village about 15 miles north of Chicago. When the FAA disciplined him in 1977, his address was in Long Beach, records show.

In a 2008 interview with the Nevada Appeal in Carson City, Pastini said he spent 21 years with the Chicago police. He attributed the success of his first restaurant — a Chicago-style deli in Reno — to his law enforcement background.

“A couple of cops came by and found out I used to be a cop too, and it became a cop hangout,” Pastini said. “It was good food. Great food.”

When the deli opened in 1991, the Reno Gazette-Journal published a story with the headline, “Ex-cop brings piece of Chicago with him.”

“Rather than nab criminals,” it begins, “former Chicago police officer Tony Pastini has turned in his badge and opened a Reno delicatessen.”

Pastini was carrying a Chicago police badge when he crashed Sunday. The owner had reported it lost in 1978, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department said.

Judge Haller: You're a dead man.

Vinny: I'm a dead man?

Judge Haller: That's right. I just faxed the clerk of New York and asked him what he knew about Jerry Gallo and do you want to know what he replied?

Vinny: Did you just say Gallo?

Judge Haller: Yes, I did.

Vinny: Gallo with a G?

Judge Haller: That's right.

Vinny: Jerry Gallo's dead!

Judge Haller: [hold up fax] I'm aware of that!

Vinny: Well I'm not Jerry Gallo! I'm Jerry C-allo! "C-A-LLO"

Judge Haller: Alright. Let's get this cleared up right now.

Going to be interesting about property ownership, insurance coverages, and other instruments of value, as this one plays out.

The insurance for any homes and vehicles damaged is pretty straight forward. The owner's policies will pay for it (covered under "falling objects" for the home or comp. for the autos), then they will try and subrogate against the pilot's insurance carrier to recover what they can. Since he may have had some real assets, they might also go after him individually.

https://www.latimes.com/local/...-20190312-story.html

Pilot lived a mysterious double life. Then a plane crash exposed aliases, falsehoods and questions

By MATTHEW ORMSETH
MAR 12, 2019 | 3:00 AM
| RENO, NEVADA

Jordan Aaron was the president of a Carson City sushi restaurant who once ran for justice of the peace in Arizona. Antonio Pastini was the brash ex-Chicago cop who befriended a brothel mogul and spun yarns of a bare-knuckled youth in the Windy City that read like a cross between “Goodfellas” and “The Outsiders.”

They were one and the same person.

He used two names and two Social Security numbers. He kept different driver’s licenses and bank accounts under the two names, an ex-wife alleged. The ex-wife — one of four — said in court filings that he kept multiple identities to hide money, and she hinted that he had “trouble with the law.”

But he might have lived out his days simply as Tony Pastini, the garrulous retired cop, had his twin-engine Cessna not plummeted 7,800 feet on Feb. 3 into an Orange County suburb, killing him and four people who were on the ground.

From the smoldering wreckage, investigators plucked a police badge belonging to Retired Chicago Patrolman #15599. That discovery would help unravel the threads of a life story Pastini spent three decades crafting. The 75-year-old, it turned out, had never been a Chicago cop, though it appeared he wished he had been.

Burning metal rained from the sky, bringing death and questions in Yorba Linda »

“Tony … loved cops,” said Jeff Partyka, a retired Reno police sergeant who frequented a deli Pastini ran in the 1990s. “They didn't just gravitate to his restaurant because of the cop thing. He was always friendly and respectful, and he actually did have pretty decent food."

It could take 18 months — or more — for federal investigators to probe the cause of the fatal crash. They will likely scrutinize the pilot’s medical condition and examine the three-day period preceding the crash, looking for fatigue and other “high-stress events,” said Peter Knudson, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman.

Only in rare circumstances, such as when suicide is suspected, will the NTSB dig into a pilot’s backstory, said Barry Schiff, a longtime pilot and aviation safety consultant.

“There are a lot of weird people out there flying airplanes,” he said. “It doesn’t mean it has anything to do with how they fly.”

In a report, the NTSB said that, on the afternoon of Feb. 3, an air traffic controller warned Pastini on takeoff from Fullerton Municipal Airport that he was headed into bad weather.

If he ignored the warning, it was not the first time he had bucked conventions in the air.

On a January morning in 1977, Pastini was flying from Las Vegas to Long Beach when the weather turned icy. Clouds and fog made it difficult to fly by sight alone. Rather than turning back or changing his route, he falsely told air traffic control he was instrument-rated and finished the flight. A judge called his indifference to airspace rules “a potential threat to himself, his passenger and other users of the system” and suspended his license for 120 days.

Three years later, his plane was found behind on inspections, carrying an expired temporary registration and leaking fluid from a brake. He lost his license for 30 days.

4 victims identified as family members in deadly Yorba Linda plane crash »

Richard Wittry, the attorney for the Federal Aviation Administration who prosecuted Pastini for the earlier incident, said the offense showed “he had a cavalier attitude toward his responsibility as a pilot in command of his private aircraft.”

“He told air traffic a vital fact that wasn’t true,” Wittry, now 84, said in an interview. “He knows he’s not instrument-rated. That’s bad news. That’s an accident bound to happen.”

For years, Pastini’s restaurants were favored by cops. He enjoyed being known as one of them, both for the camaraderie it inspired with Nevada police and the boost it delivered to his businesses, said Marc Picker, his former attorney.

He gave discounts to police officers who brought their families to eat. He held fundraisers for cops who’d been mailed letter bombs, shot by stickup men and killed in training accidents. A wall of his Reno deli was covered in police patches.

After he died and federal investigators identified him as a former Chicago cop, the Chicago Police Department, the police union and an association of retired officers declared that no one named Antonio Pastini was ever a city police officer. That applied to two other names Pastini also had used, they said. The badge he was carrying when he died had been reported missing in 1978.

Pastini’s nephew, Gary Willis, insisted that his uncle “truly was a police officer” and that he had had “perfectly legitimate reasons” to change his name. He would not say what those reasons were, beyond suggesting his uncle wanted to start life anew after leaving police work.

“When law enforcement officers leave that lifestyle, they want to leave it behind,” he said. “They're done with that life. That may be the reason for the change of names.”

But when Pastini opened a string of delis in Nevada in the early 1990s, he openly touted a law enforcement background. He told the Reno Gazette-Journal he had retired in 1986 at the rank of “detective sergeant” after a 17-year career with the Chicago police.

He regaled reporters with a life story of straddling “both sides of the law, as a criminal and as a cop,” as the Reno paper wrote in 1997. He recalled a boyhood of battling the neighborhood Germans and running with “a greased little group of thugs.”

He told reporters he was a Marine who had been stationed in Japan — a claim the Marines dispute.

As a businessman, Pastini sued a columnist for saying the beef hot dogs he sold were made of pork. He wrote fuming letters to newspapers that dared to publish failed health inspections of his delis.

“He was a talker — told it like it was,” Partyka said. “He didn’t give a rat’s ass what people thought of him.”

In the early 1990s, Pastini met Dennis Hof, a businessman who owned legal brothels in Nevada. This was years before Hof found celebrity on an HBO show about his bordellos and before his campaign for a state Assembly seat, which he won last year posthumously. On occasion, Pastini flew women who worked at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, Hof’s brothel near Carson City, as well as the Bunny Ranch’s maintenance man, said Zack Hames, Hof’s executive assistant.

In a video from Hof’s 72nd birthday in October, he called Pastini “my pilot.”

“The greatest guy, love this guy,” Hof said. “A Chicago cop.”

Antonio Peter Pastini was born Jordan Albert Isaacson in the mid-1940s. Born in Illinois, he was drawn to California in his early 20s by “the itch for exploration,” said Willis, his nephew.

At 22, he suffered a motorcycle accident so bizarre it was reported by the Signal newspaper in Santa Clarita. He staggered onto the porch of an elderly woman, clutching his chest and “gushing” blood.

“He spurted out a tale that he had been riding his motorcycle with friends when someone threw a beer can at him,” the newspaper reported.

By the 1970s, he was running gas stations, tow trucks and a stereo company. He was also piloting small planes. Richard Yorty, his partner in the stereo company, recalled taking weekday jaunts to Las Vegas.

“We used to take off about noon, fly out to Vegas and come back round 5 or 6,” said Yorty, now 64.

Civil petitions for name changes that Pastini filed in Arizona and California courts offer little explanation for why he changed names. When he legally became Jordan “Ike” Aaron in 1981, he told an Arizona court that he already went by the name in California. The following year, he ran for justice of the peace in Bullhead City using that name, the Arizona Republic reported at the time. When he changed it to Antonio Peter Pastini in 2008, he wrote in a petition that he was already using the name professionally.

During a 2001 divorce, Pastini’s fourth wife alleged that he had driver’s licenses and bank accounts under multiple names.

In a court filing, his ex-wife included a W-2 form from Pastini’s sushi restaurant that showed both Jordan Aaron and Antonio Pastini drawing a wage in 2000 with different Social Security numbers. Jordan Aaron was listed in incorporation records as president, Antonio Pastini as CEO.

Pastini could not get a liquor license in his name because he “had some trouble with the law,” the ex-wife’s attorney said in another filing. A criminal assessment, done when he changed his name in 2008, showed he was arrested but not charged in 1989 for “cheating” in Nevada.

The Times requested records of enforcement actions taken against Antonio Pastini, Jordan Aaron and Jordan Isaacson from the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which regulates gambling in the state. The board said it had records for the three names but that they were confidential under Nevada law.

The only person who knows the whole story, it seems, climbed into his Cessna 414A at Fullerton Municipal Airport the afternoon of Feb. 3, bound for Minden-Tahoe Airport in Nevada. Five minutes later, Pastini’s plane burst through the clouds over Yorba Linda, barreling nose-first toward the ground, according to witnesses. Its tail and left wing were shorn off as the pilot tried to pull the plane out of the dive.

A wing that held a fuel tank struck a home where six people had gathered to watch the Super Bowl. Two escaped with serious burns. The other four were killed: Roy Lee Anderson and Dahlia Marlies Leber Anderson, a couple who brought an elderly neighbor his paper every morning and helped with upkeep; and Stacie Norene Leber and Donald Paul Elliott, relatives of the Andersons who were visiting that Sunday afternoon.

Willis, Pastini’s nephew, said the crash was “simply a tragic accident.”

His uncle, he said, loved taking flight “like a biker loves the freedom of the road. It was just him and the sky, man.”

quote:

I see reports now that he had 4 pax with him

Fatalities were on the ground.

American Made(Up).