Zubair Khan had built the plane he died in.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A Pakistani American amateur pilot from New York City died last week when the small plane he self-built and was flying crashed into the waters of the Long Island Sound.
Forty-one year-old Zubair Khan, a Vice-President of Derivatives Trading Technology at Barclay’s Capital, was killed in the morning hours of July 7, when he was flying a single-engine aircraft that he had built himself, according to the New York Post. Khan was reportedly an experienced pilot and an aviation enthusiast, who would frequently perform death-defying stunts in these self-made small airplanes.
Police found the aircraft floating a few miles offshore just after the plane hit the water, and said that the plane’s parachute had already been deployed, indicating that Khan made some kind of effort to stop the plane’s fall before he reached his tragic death. The US Coast Guard was the first agency to report that the plane went down, with officials having sighted the aircraft hitting the water from a distance.
Local News 12 Long Island reports that the plane was registered to Shelter Air, which is based in Brooklyn; Khan himself was a resident of Manhattan. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is currently conducting its own, extensive investigation into the crash, and will compile a report as to what happened.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was also involved with the initial aftermath of the crash, and notified Khan’s next of kin just a few hours after he was discovered to have perished. A friend speaking with the New York Post said that Khan would often take friends flying, and remembers him as a fun-loving man who enjoyed taking risks.
Khan’s funeral and memorial services were held on Wednesday, July 9. He was a financial software engineer originally, whose parents hailed from Pakistan. In fact, according to Riverhead News, Khan’s father is a retired Pakistani Army colonel, and likely inspired the aviation craze that had his son building his own planes and doing his own loop-de-loops thousands of feet in the air.