THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 13, 1994 TAG: 9407130407
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SARAH HUNTLEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Every night before Bill Sklar left his Cessna 173-RG in its hangar at Hampton Roads Airport, he checked and double-checked the engine fluids and tires, cleaned the windshield and refueled the plane.
After every 1,000 miles of flight time, he insisted that the same Federal Aviation Administration inspector do a complete maintenance check. And he was the only pilot for a Reedville menhaden fishing company to participate twice in a NASA-sponsored aviation safety workshop.
In short, Bill Sklar was a cautious pilot.
``He told me again and again that an airplane is not a toy. You don't get up there and hot-dog, because it will kill you,'' said his wife, Janice.
The 62-year-old Portsmouth pilot had logged 48,000 hours of flight time - 2,000 complete days in the air - all incident-free.
On Monday, shortly after 4:30 p.m., Bill Sklar was involved in his first accident. It killed him.
Sklar was circling over Chesapeake Bay near Cape Charles on Virginia's Eastern Shore when his fish-spotting plane collided with a Navy helicopter and plummeted into the water.
``We aren't talking about a green pilot. He's been flying for us for nearly 30 years,'' said Barney White, a spokesman in Houston for Zapata Protein Fishing Co. ``This was one of our best men.''
The National Transportation Safety Board began its investigation Tuesday into the cause of the crash on the Eastern Shore. Meanwhile, interviews with Sklar's bewildered colleagues and relatives followed a single theme: Sklar was an expert aviator with a spotless safety record.
The FAA backed this up. Its data base, dating to 1973, showed Sklar clean of any accidents or incidents. He had a commercial license to fly single- and multi-engine planes.
Janice Sklar said her husband learned to fly in Pennsylvania when he was 15 years old, saving money his parents gave him for school trips to pay for thelessons.
He worked as a contract spotter for Zapata Protein for the past 28 years and was on a mission for the company when his plane collided with a Navy MH-53E Sea Dragon based at Norfolk Naval Air Station. The Cessna had taken off from Hampton Roads Airport in Chesapeake on Monday morning.
It should have been a routine flight for Sklar, who flew from May to December in search of menhaden, a type of herring that is processed into fish meal and fed to livestock.
``He was our senior spotter, a great pilot and a heck of a good employee,'' said Steve Jones, Zapata's general manager and a friend of Sklar.
Instead the mission turned tragic.
Eyewitnesses said the single-engine plane passed beneath the Navy helicopter, then circled before the two collided. The impact sheared a wing from the plane, sending the Cessna spiraling into the Bay, and tore a gash 6 feet in diameter in the helicopter's right rear section.
Rangers from Kiptopeke State Park later found Sklar's body in the Bay, and it was recovered by a Virginia Marine Resources Commission boat. The four crew members of the Navy helicopter were uninjured when the chopper made an emergency landing in a nearby wheat field.
An experienced spotter can recognize menhaden schools, Jones said, which resemble huge ink blotches or black clouds over the water. The fish are easiest to spot in the summertime when they swim closer to the surface.
``The other spotters told me there was good visibility yesterday, so I would think Bill would have been up fairly high,'' Jones said. He explained that higher altitudes give the spotter a clearer sense of the school's size and range.
The exact altitudes of the Cessna and the helicopter have not been released.
When spotters target a menhaden school, they radio one of the company's 500-ton refrigerator ships, called ``steamers,'' and smaller ``purse boats.''
As the scout plane awaits the arrival of the boats, the pilot usually circles the area. When the vessels pull into the area, the purse boats, which are 40 feet long, surround the schools and cast nets into the water. The captured fish are then loaded onto the steamer.
Jones said Sklar had been in contact with other spotters earlier Monday, but he had not radioed a steamer at the time of the collision.
The Navy is withholding further comment on the cause of the crash until an investigation is completed. Sklar's family, however, is determined to prove he was not to blame.
``That helicopter was in the wrong place at the wrong time,'' Janice Sklar said. ``There's nothing in this lifetime that will convince me that it wasn't.''
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT PLANE ACCIDENT MILITARY FATALITY
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