Ian Hofmann spent 40 years traveling the world as an airline pilot. But he died last week not far from his home, when the jet he was co-piloting attempted an emergency landing on Interstate 75 in Naples.
Hofmann, 65, and the pilot, Edward Daniel Murphy, 50, died in the ensuing crash. The cabin attendant and two passengers survived.
Both pilots were Broward residents: Murphy lived in Oakland Park; and Hofmann attended Stranahan High School and was living in Pompano Beach.
Family and friends remembered them as experienced pilots who prioritized safety and saved lives the day they died.
“His last moments, calmly speaking with ATC [air traffic control] as he tried to save the passengers and crew in the face of a desperate emergency of losing both engines at low altitude, is how we will always remember him,” Hofmann’s son, Chris, wrote in his father’s GoFundMe.
Hofmann was a loving father who was completely dedicated to his career, his son told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday. Hofmann worked as a pilot for USAir, which had two back-to-back crashes in 1991 and 1992; his family had worried for his safety before.
“Even as a child, I was always a little bit worried he wouldn’t come home one day,” Chris Hofmann said. “… There’s always that worry hanging over you. You try not to think about it, but it was always a possibility.”
The Bombardier Challenger 600 jet, operated by Fort Lauderdale-based company Hop-A-Jet Worldwide Charter, took off from Columbus, Ohio, about 1 p.m. Friday and was heading toward the Naples airport just after 3 p.m. when the pilot told air traffic control that the plane had lost both engines.
“We’re clear to land, but we’re not gonna make the runway. We’ve lost both engines,” one of the pilots said calmly, identified by his son as Hofmann. Then the plane crashed onto the highway and exploded into flames.
WATCH: New video shows Friday’s plane crash on I-75 in Naples, Florida pic.twitter.com/M8EvNtgcxv
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Witnesses saw the plane hit a car on the interstate, dragging it with its wing. One person inside the car has serious injuries, according to the FAA, while three others in another car were unharmed.
The three survivors on the plane were hospitalized, and their conditions were unknown Tuesday evening: crew member Sydney Ann Bosmans, 23, of Jupiter; and passengers Aaron Baker, 35, and Audra Green, 23, both of Columbus, Ohio.
“I would like to extend my condolences to the families and friends of Edward Daniel Murphy and Ian Frederick Hofmann who were piloting the small plane that crashed near Naples on Friday afternoon,” Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said on Facebook on Sunday. “The ultimate destination of the plane was Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, where the its operator is located. I know the corporate family at Hop-A-Jet Worldwide Charter is also grieving for the loss of their employees and send my thoughts and prayers to them as well.”
A spokesperson for Hop-A-Jet said in a statement that the company was “mourning the loss of two close friends and colleagues.”
Their actions “spared the lives of their passengers and many other potential casualties on the ground,” the statement continues. “Thanks to their efforts, our Cabin Attendant was able to assist both passengers off the airplane to safety. Her efforts were incredibly brave and selfless.”
At 65, Hofmann had reached the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots, so he began flying jets for Hop-A-Jet part-time about a year and a half ago to transition out of the job, his son said. It was a fitting way to end his career, where he began: Hofmann got his first job in aviation working the fuel lines at Hop-A-Jet in the 1970s.
Hofmann had four children, a wife and an ex-wife, according to the GoFundMe post. His work often took him far away during holidays or birthdays, though he’d come back bearing gifts and candies from his travels to Europe, Asia and South America. On one trip to Germany, his son recalled, he managed to stuff a cuckoo clock from Frankfurt in his suitcase.
In recent years, Hofmann’s work kept him closer to home, and the two lived near one another in Pompano Beach. They had just eaten dinner together a week and a half before Hofmann died. He was planning to travel up to Boston to see his daughter and Chris Hofmann’s sister, Grace, who is pregnant and expecting a baby this week.
Less is publicly known about Murphy, though a family member who asked to remain anonymous told the Fox TV station in Naples that he was passionate about flying and concerned for others. A voicemail left for his sister was not returned Tuesday.
“He was dedicated to his work and has lived his life doing what made him happy everyday,” the family member told the station. “I would imagine that his primary concern the day of the accident were the lives of others on that plane.”
Hymie Lazega, a friend and fellow pilot of Murphy’s, told WTVJ-Ch. 6 that he had flown with Murphy multiple times and the pilot knew what he was doing.
“We are talking about a very, very experienced guy with experience in this airplane,” Lazega told NBC 6. “We are all in shock, I have flown that plane with him, many many times, and again, it is a tragedy, everybody is devastated so we are a very small community for so many pilots.”
Hofmann was also “obsessive about safety,” his son wrote in the fundraiser.
“He was always very meticulous about safety and just learning any information that could help him be a better pilot,” he told the Sun Sentinel.
After the crash, Chris Hofmann said he became increasingly upset reading posts from people online who blamed the pilots for trying to land on a busy road, calling them cowardly. He wishes they knew that the decision his father and Murphy made that day was the best one. The plane landed right next to a retaining wall, he said; on the other side is a neighborhood with hundreds of homes.
Most of the response has been overwhelmingly positive, however: hundreds of people have messaged Hofmann’s family in the days since the crash.
One woman told Chris Hofmann that her home sits right behind the retaining wall, and that his father saved her life. Others shared stories about losing their own loved ones in similar tragedies, he said, “kind of helping each other through the grief.”
“There is no closure, there’s no chance to say goodbye,” Chris Hofmann added. “And I think that strikes a chord with a lot of people.”