Pilot in deadly Yorba Linda house crash had been disciplined

The pilot whose plane broke apart and crashed into a Yorba Linda home, killing five people, was disciplined for dangerous flying years earlier.

The Los Angeles Times reports 75-year-old Antonio Pastini from Gardnerville, Nevada, was flying home after visiting his daughter and granddaughter on Super Bowl 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.

The Los Angeles Times reported citing records kept by the Library of Congress, years earlier, Pastini, then using the name Jordan Isaacson, had his license twice suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration. In 1977, Pastini had his pilot's license suspended for 120 days after he flew from Las Vegas to Long Beach, 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.

Administrative law judge Jerrell R. Davis wrote Pastini disregarded airspace rules and posed "a potential threat to himself, his passenger and other users of the system." The newspaper reports, 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.