On July 25 Glenn Maben, 53, director of flight operations for Spectrum Aeronautical, and vice director Nathan Forr
Glenn Maben & Nathan Forrest
On July 25 Glenn Maben, 53, director of flight operations for Spectrum Aeronautical, and vice director Nathan Forrest, 25, were killed when the company’s Spectrum 33 prototype crashed on the side of the runway while taking off from Spanish Fork Airport, Utah. The scheduled routine test flight entered a roll and immediately pinwheeled when the right wing hit the ground. Investigators eventually determined the cause to be misconnected controls.
Maben was born in Stamford, N.Y., in July 1953 and spent his entire life around airplanes. He held a B.A. in aerospace engineering from State University of New York at Buffalo and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from California State University at Fresno. Early in his career he was with Grumman Aircraft Systems as a flight-test engineer before moving on to Voyager Aircraft in Mojave, Calif., as a mechanic, flight-test engineer and chase pilot.
