Area fliers mourning two pilots
BY DANA BARTHOLOMEW, Staff Writer
LA Daily News
Article Last Updated: 01/15/2007 09: 50 : 39 PM PST
One veteran pilot taught teens to fly when no one else would. The other left a lucrative business to chase his dream as a corporate jet pilot.
Capt. Frank Kratzer, 72, and Fernando Fernandez, 49, were aboard the ill-fated charter jet flight that crashed last week near Van Nuys Airport, company officials announced Monday.
"It was a great tragedy for both," said David Burke, spokesman for Sun Quest Executive Air Charter of Van Nuys, the company owned by Kratzer that operated the plane.
"Frank, I would say, was the absolute consummate professional - and an ambassador for aviation."
Fernandez, he added, loved flying enough to switch careers and would also be missed.
Their twin-engine Cessna Citation jet was engulfed in flames Friday morning after it plummeted into a vacant lot north of Van Nuys Airport. Some saw a baggage door open during takeoff.
The business jet was headed for Long Beach to pick up passengers bound for Arizona.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the Sun Quest crash. A second Sun Quest incident - a midair collision five years ago over Van Nuys Airport with a plane owned by actor Jim Carey - resulted in no downed aircraft or injury.
While Los Angeles County coroner's officials had not confirmed the identities of the pilots, the San Fernando Valley aviation community has mourned their loss.
"Two of our best have `gone West,"' said fellow pilot Russell Watts, 54, of Sylmar, who knew both men for years at Whiteman Airport in Pacoima. "It's unfortunate that the good guys are the ones to go."
Kratzer, of Northridge, had logged more than 37,000 flight hours as a commercial jet pilot for Western and Delta airlines.
In the early 1980s, he launched Mobile Flight Training at Whiteman Airport, which later became Sun Quest Flight School. In 1992, he founded a Sun Quest charter service company in Van Nuys.
An excellent instructor, he had trained an entire generation of pilots, friends say.
"Chris" Fernandez, as he was also known, was a self-employed Hollywood studios electrician before pursuing a career as a pilot, associates said.
A student of Sun Quest, he had logged several thousand flight hours and had flown for the company since August. He had been active in the Latin American Pilots Association and regularly flew his Beechcraft Baron to Mexico.
"He was one of those really easy-going guys who always had something positive to say," Watts said.
It was Katzer and his wife, Joanne, who offered to train more than a dozen Aviation Explorers after other companies had turned them down.
They offered discounts to kids who couldn't afford flight school and "Capt. Frank," as he was known, regaled the teens with big-jet stories.
"He was the salt of the earth," said Ruth Logan, co-founder of Aviation Explorer Post 747.
"He loved kids."
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