A Manhattan pilot known for his daredevil loop-de-loops died when his single-engine, self-built aircraft crashed Monday morning in Long Island Sound, authorities said.
Zubair Khan, 41, of Leroy Street in the West Village was flying the one-passenger Raven about 8:50 a.m. seven miles northwest of the Mattituck Inlet on the North Fork when he went down, the US Coast Guard said.
A vice president of derivatives trading technology for Barclay’s Capital, Khan built airplanes and was a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association, according to his LinkedIn page.
“Zubair has had his flight license for ages. I’ve flown with him before. I’ve done loop-de-loops with him in stunt planes. He was a pretty experienced pilot. He built that plane himself. It was a crazy, insane, beautiful thing actually,” said Eli Slyder, 38, a business owner and neighbor who came to Khan’s home after hearing the news.
“I can’t believe this. Zubair was one of the most wildly far out, interesting and dynamic people I’ve ever met. This is a horrible thing that’s happened,” said Slyder, adding that Khan had about 40 hours flight time in his homemade craft.
The call came in from another small plane nearby that had spotted a “small, white experimental aircraft,” bobbing on the surface about midway between the New York and Connecticut coasts, the Coast Guard said.
Rescuers from the Coast Guard station based about 15 miles away in New Haven responded along with a Southhold Police Marine Unit, who removed Khan’s body from the plane and had the wreckage towed to shore.
Beachgoers lined up on rocks along the mouth of the Mattituck Inlet to gawk at the unusual sight of a Sea Tow boat dragging the partially submerged plane towards shore.
“It’s horrible. I wonder how it happened on such a perfect day,” said Mark McWeeney, 51, a waiter from Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan, visiting with his girlfriend.
Chris DiGirolamo, 46, a publicist from Mattituck, questioned the pilot’s judgment.
“I don’t know if I’d be flying seven miles off the coast in a homemade plane. But he did,” he said. “It’s a horrible thing to see somebody wheeling in a plane when you know somebody’s mourning a lost life.”
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton