A Carlsbad physicist has been identified as the pilot who was killed when his small private aircraft crashed into a residential hillside last week in La Jolla.
The San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed this week that Michael M. Salour, 74, of Carlsbad, was the lone fatality in the collision.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records, Salour was the registered owner of the fixed-wing single-engine Cessna P210 that crashed into a hilltop around 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 15, roughly 100 yards away from several homes and condos in the La Jolla Shores Heights neighborhood.
Salour was the only person found on board the craft and he was pronounced dead at the scene, law enforcement said. The cause of death for Salour was multiple blunt-force injuries and the manner of death was determined to be an accident, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
According to his personal website, Salour, who earned his masters and doctoral degrees in physics at Harvard University under Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate Nicolaas Bloembergen, is also a highly experienced pilot, reportedly logging over 17,700 hours of flight time.
Salour has a federal airline transport pilot license from the FAA and certifications in larger transport and passenger aircraft, the website says. Salour also holds senior-level flight certifications as an engineer and instructor and is deemed a technical expert “thoroughly familiar with the operation and function of various airplane components.”
Salour is the founder of several companies headquartered in Carlsbad, including Linkatel, Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN) and Integrated Photonic Technologies (IPITEK), specializing in manufacturing and servicing fiber-optic-based technology for the defense and aerospace industries, as well as numerous U.S. government agencies.
‘Tragic accident’
During a press briefing on Nov. 16 near the crash site, the National Transportation Safety Board said it was continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident.
“On behalf of all of us at the National Transportation Safety Board, we offer our sincere condolences to the family and friends of the victim who lost their life in this tragic accident,” said NTSB air safety investigator Paul Basti.
Federal aviation investigators spent the day gathering evidence from the wreckage and were unable to comment further on the circumstances surrounding the crash, according to Basti. The agency’s inquiry will focus on three primary areas of interest at the time of the crash: the pilot’s qualifications and state of mind, the plane’s condition and the environment, such as weather and terrain.
The agency anticipates issuing a preliminary report in two weeks and a final report in about 18 months.
According to the NTSB, Salour’s plane departed at 5:33 p.m. on Nov. 15 from Buchanan Field in Concord toward an unknown destination. Flight tracking records show the light aircraft appearing to circle French Valley Airport in Murrieta before heading further south.
At some point, Salour radioed that he was low on fuel. When an air traffic controller asked the pilot how much fuel was left in the plane, Salour said, “Very few minutes. Just need to get us as fast as you can on the ground,” according to reporting by the La Jolla Light.
Less than two minutes later, Salour radioed, “We lost all our fuel, so we have to make an emergency landing.”
“Are you completely out of fuel?”
“Affirmative,” Salour said in what is reportedly his final radio communication.
The flight records show the plane flew near Gillespie Field Airport in El Cajon before heading to Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in Kearny Mesa. According to Basti, Salour attempted an instrument approach at Montgomery Field but couldn’t land the plane. The plane then continued on toward La Jolla, Basti said.
According to FlightAware, Salour’s plane flew over several airfields in San Diego County and crashed just a few miles from a potential airstrip at Gliderport in Torrey Pines.
At the time of the crash, the weather was mostly cloudy with intermittent light showers throughout the evening. Shortly before 9:30 p.m., witnesses contacted authorities after hearing a plane “sputtering” above their homes. However, several residents in the neighborhood told The Coast News they didn’t hear anything the night of the crash.
First responders searched in the dark before eventually discovering the plane’s wreckage using a drone unit at around 3 a.m. on Thursday morning.
The six-seat, pressurized Cessna P210 Centurion was manufactured in 1979. The plane’s tail fin, right wing and portions of the fuselage and cockpit were visible from Caminito Claro, a narrow, winding street roughly 100 feet below the crash site in a quiet neighborhood.
The light aircraft’s engine, or a portion of it, was next to the downed plane, but it’s unclear if the motor was ejected during the crash or removed as part of a third-party aircraft recovery team’s efforts to transfer the plane to another location for further examination.
The FAA’s preliminary accident/incident report shows the “aircraft crashed under unknown circumstances.”
