LIHU‘E — Less than a week after Kaua‘i Aerosports co-owner Steve Sprague’s plane crashed into waters off Honopu Beach, family members of the pilot say they doubt the accident is due to negligence. “So many people say it has to
LIHU‘E — Less than a week after Kaua‘i Aerosports co-owner Steve Sprague’s plane crashed into waters off Honopu Beach, family members of the pilot say they doubt the accident is due to negligence.
“So many people say it has to be pilot error,” Scott Sprague said. “But knowing my brother I can’t imagine him doing something wrong when it comes to flying.
“He was just too safe. Especially with someone else’s life.”
The son of an air traffic controller and private pilot, Sprague had been flying for most of his 49 years, said his wife Anna. He took up professional flying in the early 1980s, via hot air balloons, single-engine airplanes, airships, gyrocopters, powered parachutes and finally trikes — including the P&M’s light sport aircraft “Quik” that went down in Tuesday’s crash.
“He learned to navigate at a very early age,” Anna Sprague said. “He would fly everywhere with his dad.”
She and Sprague co-founded Kaua‘i Aerosports, which operated out of the Port Allen Airport in Hanapepe. The powered hang glider business provided introductory flight lessons given by Sprague since it opened in 2009. The couple has been married for more than five years and were awaiting the arrival of their second plane at the time of Sprague’s accident.
“He was a true pilot right to the core,” Anna Sprague said. “He was in his element. … He died doing what he liked to do.”
Fellow pilots and friends, she said, were shocked to hear of Sprague’s death.
“They just couldn’t believe it. I’m still having a hard time believing it,” Anna Sprague said.
A life in the air
Scott Sprague, who is Steve Sprague’s junior by about 15 years, said his brother was born in Midland, Texas. He married his first wife at 18, and always loved aviation. As a child, Scott remembers Steve making him paper airplanes.
“He could make any paper airplane, any shape imaginable and it would fly,” Scott Sprague said.
He said his brother went on to become a conscientious and meticulous pilot.
As Scott grew into adulthood, the two men didn’t always see eye to eye, but he admired his brother.
“He would have your back.”
He did recall one flight accident in San Antonio. It occurred almost 10 years ago in which a woman was injured when Sprague accidentally flew into a powerline while landing to avoid bad weather. Scott said Steve warned passengers to duck but the woman did not.
“It was one of those situations where it was he said, she said,” Scott Sprague said.
He wasn’t there, but Scott said he believes it was a freak accident.
“It wasn’t that he wasn’t a good pilot,” he said. “All those sports are dangerous.”
Anna, who met Steve on Match.com in San Antonio, said he has three children and was a wonderful husband and father.
“One thing I liked about him was he was not a quitter,” she said. “He was unstoppable.”
While in Texas, her husband ran a hot air balloon business, but Anna said the weather and the economy were less than kind, so they decided to sell. Steve received job offers in Scotland, Africa, India and Egypt, but he instead got a position with Birds in Paradise before starting Kaua‘i Aerosports. The couple moved to Kalaheo.
He was so serious about his trade that he served as a Federal Aviation Administration safety counselor, Anna Sprague said, adding that he was neither a daredevil nor a risk taker.
“I think it’s sad what happened, but things happen,” she said. “You know what, with pilots, it’s a risk they take.”
Considering that her husband’s accident is the second involving a light sport aircraft in about three months, and the third since 2010, Sprague said perhaps the FAA needs to implement stronger safety rules. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the incident.
Since her husband’s passing, Anna said she isn’t sure if she’ll continue their business.
“Nothing works without him,” she said. “Most probably, I don’t think I would continue doing it.”
Scott Sprague said he and his family are grieving for Steve as well as his passenger, 53-year-old Ray Foreman of Vista, Calif.
“He’s definitely greatly missed already,” Scott Sprague said. “It’s just a horrible situation.”
