Fatal Plane Crash Linked to Door Defects, NTSB Report Reveals

FULLERTON, Calif. — A fatal plane crash that killed a pilot and his teenage daughter and injured 19 workers earlier this month was likely caused by defects in the aircraft’s door-locking system, according to a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The incident occurred on Jan. 2, 2025, when a Van’s RV-10 experimental amateur-built plane crashed into a furniture warehouse near Fullerton Airport shortly after takeoff. The pilot, Pascal Reid, and his 16-year-old daughter, Kelly Reid, were killed instantly. The collision sparked a fire and left 19 people on the ground with injuries, eight of them serious.

Witnesses and surveillance footage revealed that the pilot’s cabin door was not fully closed before takeoff. The NTSB report stated that the door was “not flush with the fuselage” and opened shortly after liftoff. Reid radioed for an emergency landing but lost control of the aircraft, which crashed into a warehouse about 1,500 feet short of the runway.

Investigators found that Reid’s plane had undergone modifications to its door-locking system, including the use of solid steel locking pins instead of the kit-supplied aluminum pins. Additionally, a secondary safety latch recommended by the manufacturer had not been installed. The plane’s door-latch indicator system, designed to alert the pilot if a door was not fully shut, had also been modified, rendering it ineffective.

“The modified system would not have warned the pilot if the forward latch pins had failed to fully engage,” the NTSB report stated. The left main-cabin door, which was found on the warehouse roof 150 feet from the impact point, was not fully locked at the time of the crash.

Kelly Reid, a junior at Huntington Beach High School, was remembered by her soccer coach, Raul Ruiz, as a vibrant and energetic student. “Her father was at every single game, always so proud of his daughter,” the school’s girls soccer team posted on Instagram.

The plane, assembled by Reid in 2011, was based on a kit shipped to him between 2007 and 2008. A retrofit kit for the door assembly had been sent to Reid in January 2010, but investigators noted that it was never installed. The NTSB’s final report is expected to provide further details on the crash.