Pilot in Deadly California House Crash Was Disciplined

The pilot whose plane broke apart and crashed into a Southern California home, killing five people, was disciplined for dangerous flying years earlier, it was reported Friday.

Antonio Pastini, 75, of Gardnerville, Nevada, was flying home after visiting his daughter and granddaughter on Sunday when his Cessna began coming apart and debris slammed into a Yorba Linda home, which caught fire. Four people inside the house died.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Years earlier, Pastini, then using the name Jordan Albert Isaacson, had his license twice suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday, citing records kept by the Library of Congress.

In 1977, Pastini had his pilot’s license suspended for 120 days after he flew from Las Vegas to Long Beach, California, in cloudy and icy weather and falsely told an air traffic controller that he had “IFR clearance” that indicated he was capable of flying the route with instruments.

Pastini disregarded airspace rules and posed “a potential threat to himself, his passenger and other users of the system,” wrote an administrative law judge, Jerrell R. Davis.

In 1980, Pastini lost his license for 30 days after Davis found that his plane was behind on inspections, carried only an expired temporary registration and was “unairworthy” because of a hydraulic fluid leak from a break and other problems, the Times said.

The Times said the FAA confirmed that Isaacson was Pastini. The agency said he submitted two name changes to the FAA: first in 1991 from Jordan Albert Isaacson to Jordan Ike Aaron, then in 2008 to Antonio Peter Pastini.

Pastini told friends, family and even newspapers that he was a retired Chicago police officer.

But Chicago police have said he never worked for them and a Chicago police badge he was carrying when he crashed had been reported lost in 1978.