Family: Crash victim was sweet man ‘crazed about planes’

Brookhaven Calabro Airport manager Matt Holmes said that when he arrived for work at 7 a.m. Monday, Mr. Khan had already left the runway.

Brookhaven is a towerless airport, meaning planes are free to fly or land when they want without communicating with an air traffic controller, Mr. Holmes said. Though the airport is staffed from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., pilots can take off or land at any time.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said they received an 8:50 a.m. notification from a seaplane pilot in the vicinity of the crash that a “small, white, experimental aircraft with a parachute deployed” had possibly gone down in the Sound.

John Kelly, owner of the Connecticut charter service that owned the plane whose pilot notified the Coast Guard, said his pilot circled the area of the crash several times in attempt to spot someone in the water.

“He circled a few times and he couldn’t find anyone,” Mr. Kelly said. “He circled until he was notified by the Coast Guard that they were on their way and he could continue on.”

The Coast Guard soon found the aircraft submerged in the water north of Mattituck, an FAA spokesman said.

While a parachute had been deployed from the plane, Mr. Khan was found inside the aircraft, according to Detective Sgt. John Sinning of the Southold Police Department. Southold police and Mattituck Fire Department divers recovered the body, officials said, and Sea Tow brought the downed airplane back to Mattituck Inlet Marina, where it was hoisted from the water about 4 p.m. Monday.

An FAA spokesperson said the next of kin was identified at 1:30 p.m. Monday.

The National Transportation Safety Board is the lead agency investigating the crash. An initial report is expected next week, an NTSB spokesman said.

Mr. Holmes, the airport manager, said he had not heard about the crash prior to being notified by the FAA.

“I was shocked when the FAA called,” he said, adding that accidents involving planes based at the airport are rare. Mr. Holmes and an employee at Mid-Island Air Service, where Mr. Khan rented hangar space, said he was a quiet man who mostly kept to himself while working on his plane.