“His altitude dropped to five hundred feet. I assumed he was still troubled by the overcast. I knew his destination was Santa Barbara and I considered calling to tell him to move closer inland since we had better visibility here. But I never got to it.”

“Why not?”

“He suddenly climbed in altitude, to near three thousand feet. But he was hardly at that height when he started to dive. He went almost straight down into the water.”

“Did you try to contact him during this time?”

“Yes. He did not respond.”

“What do you think caused him to dive?”

“He got disoriented. He lost sight of the water and the sky and couldn’t tell up from down. In such a situation it’s easy to overcompensate and send the plane into what’s called a graveyard spin. Before he could pull out of it, he hit the water.” Gabe paused. “That was the NTSB’s conclusion as well.”

“If Matt was struggling with overcast and was flying low to avoid it, then why did he suddenly climb so high?”

“I’m not sure. The overcast might have suddenly opened up and he felt confident to go higher.”

“Is that likely?”

“No. Five hundred feet would have been low to fly in poor conditions at night. But he did not need to climb to three thousand to get comfortable—especially with the threat of the overcast so near. Also, his climb was bizarre. It was as if he pulled back hard on the wheel. He shot almost straight up.”

“How do you explain that?”

“The same way the NTSB did—total disorientation and panic.”

“Yet you say Matt was an experienced pilot?”

“He was—he had logged over a thousand flight hours. He often flew to Santa Barbara to see his mother and I had spoken to him many times. But I must stress again that he was not instrument trained. Once he lost all visual clues, his experience did not count for much.”

“Was it totally dark when he crashed?”

“Yes.”

“You say he regularly flew to Santa Barbara to see his mother. That means he was flying a familiar route?”

“Not exactly. He was not coming from Santa Monica Airport—as he usually did—but from Catalina. That’s why he was so far over the water.”

“How far out?”

“Five miles.”

“When his plane went down, what did you do?”

“I notified the Coast Guard and the NTSB. Also, I contacted the Santa Barbara tower and the Santa Barbara police. I wanted the latter to get ahold of his mother.”

“Did the Coast Guard find his plane?”

“They found nothing that night. In the dark—even with our best estimate as to where he went down—it was hard to see much. But in the morning they saw scattered wreckage from his plane.”

“Was this a rescue attempt? Did the Coast Guard think he could be found alive?”