BOULDER CITY, NV (FOX5) -
A day after an L-39 Albatros crashed in a desert area outside Boulder City, NTSB investigators are preparing to remove it from the crash site and the two victims have been identified.
The Red Steel Jet Team out of Texas told FOX 5 one of their pilots, 65-year-old Douglas Gilliss, was on board.
Gilliss is from Solana Beach, CA.
According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, the passenger was 65-year-old Richard Winslow from Palm Desert, CA.
On the Red Steel Jet Team's Facebook page, the company praised Gilliss' experience stating, "In the past year Doug was one of the driving forces behind the Red Steel Jet Team's progressive success and safety… Doug was also our lead pilot in our inaugural air show season."
But the team said the L-39, a 1960s-era Czechoslovakian jet fighter, was not their plane.
Student pilot Ronald Serota has flown a L-39 similar to the one which crashed.
"This plane is considered an experimental aircraft by the FAA, and requires heavy inspection. Most of the air show planes are 1980s… a very small wing span, so it's just literally like a cruise missile," Serota told FOX5.
Serota said he met Gilliss several times at different air shows, and doubts the crash was pilot error.
"He's just got so much knowledge, I don't see him having forgotten to pull up the landing gear," Serota said.
It could take up to a year to know the official cause of the crash, but Serota believes that an overheated engine may have been the cause of the jet crash.
"In my opinion, is that he didn't check the temperature gage quick enough. But anyway he would have been able to do nothing about it," Serota said.
According to the Red Steel Jet Team, that plane which crashed was one of two L-39's heading to Van Nuys, CA.
The company said Gilliss was going to fly commercial to Kansas City, and was supposed to be performing in an air show at Whiteman Air Force base, MO this weekend.
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