Certification flight ends in tragedy for student, instructor

Monday, April 7, 2003 | 11:11 a.m.

Karen Virga expected to see her husband of six months, Salvatore, after he completed his pilot's certification flight Friday in Las Vegas.

Instead, she said she got a call on Friday at her home in Minnesota and learned that Salvatore Virga, 44, had died with his instructor in a plane crash in northwest Las Vegas that morning.

"The coroner's office said the engine wasn't running and he died instantly," Karen Virga said Sunday.

Salvatore Virga's Las Vegas home had burned down a month ago and his possessions were in storage in preparation for a move back to Minnesota, his wife said Sunday.

A memorial service for Virga is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. today in the Grand Canyon Room of the North Las Vegas Airport, where Virga's flight originated.

Services and burial will take place in Minnesota.

Flight instructor Bobbie E. Suell, 60, also died when the single-engine Cessna 172 crashed.

Suell will be buried at Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City later this week, family members said. Plans have not been completed.

Virga had been in Las Vegas for nine years and worked as a flight engineer. He was learning to pilot planes, his wife said.

He had an airline ticket to Minnesota for a midnight Friday flight, she said.

Virga was born Nov. 28, 1958, in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In addition to his wife, Virga is survived by a stepdaughter, Emily, of Plymouth, Minn.; his father, Joseph Virga, and a brother, Andrew Virga, both of Las Vegas.

Suell was born March 31, 1943, in Lake Providence, La., his sons Bobby and Tommy said Sunday.

Suell joined the Air Force and retired as a master sergeant in 1986 after 25 years.

Both sons said they received their single-engine pilot licenses from their father.

"I've been flying since I was 2 years old with him," said Tommy, 23.

Both sons were born in Japan after Suell married his wife, Noi, while in the military.

Tommy Suell is planning to take Asian studies or recreation courses at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Bobby, 37, is in charge of recreation and is the mortuary officer at Beale Air Force Base in California.

The elder Suell also had a black belt in martial arts, his family said. The Federal Aviation Administration certified him as an instructor and he had more than 15,000 hours logged in the air, his sons said.

Nearly three years ago, another Las Vegas pilot made a crash landing in the same area as Friday's crash -- an area known as the Kyle Canyon detention basin, about three miles northwest of Centennial High School.

Bill Phillips, a 35-year veteran of flying planes, helicopters, hot air balloons and gliders, said Sunday that he used the detention basin for an emergency landing of an experimental RV-6 on July 12, 2000.

"At 6,500 feet, after a couple rolls north of Kyle Canyon Road, I noticed the cockpit was full of smoke," Phillips said.

He headed for the basin and managed to save the $75,000 plane, he said.

"I ain't no hero, I'm just lucky," Phillips said.

On Sunday morning, Phillips lifted off from the North Las Vegas Airport and dropped skydivers Mark Schlatter and Kent Lane, who unfurled a gigantic U.S. flag over the drag races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Friday's crash was the second in less than a week involving flights departing from the North Las Vegas Airport.

On March 30 a Beechcraft Bonanza slammed into a drainage ditch next to the Rancho Mesa apartments at 2991 N. Rancho Drive. The only person aboard the plane, pilot Joseph Randall Edwards, survived.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating both crashes but it could be months before final reports are released, a spokesman said.

The two deaths Friday brought to 10 the number of people killed in plane crashes in Las Vegas or North Las Vegas since Jan. 1, 1999. There have been 41 crashes of aircraft in those cities during the same period, according to the NTSB.