To his friends, he was J.J. To his teachers, he was a pleasure. To the University, he was an active student and a success-bound graduate.
But after the fatally unsuccessful takeoff of US Airways Flight 5481, first officer Jonathan Gibbs was simply a high-flying duck cut down in his prime. He was 27.
Just as his plane began to climb into the sky above Charlotte/Douglas International Airport on Wednesday morning, the twin-engine Beech 1900D veered upward. The fully loaded propeller plane then twisted left, crashed into a hangar and exploded in a fireball, killing both pilots and all 19 passengers.
Gibbs, who lived in North Carolina, had been a commercial pilot for about two years and had more than 700 hours in the cockpit of twin-engine turboprops like the one that crashed Wednesday.
The youngest of the two children, Gibbs grew up in the Lakeport and Ukiah areas of California. He began taking flying lessons at the Ukiah airport when he was 16 and obtained his pilot’s license at 19.
After graduating from Ukiah High School, he enrolled at the University, graduating with a Spanish major and an economics minor in 1997. Gibbs moved to New Mexico in 1999 to pursue his education as a commercial airline pilot.
“He loved traveling and seeing anything and everything about different places,” said Matt Kershner, a fellow University graduate and college friend of Gibbs.
Kershner and Gibbs shared a love for flying and each wanted to become a pilot. Oftentimes, Kershner said, he turned to Gibbs for advice about piloting.
“There was nothing he loved more than to share his flying stories with me,” Kershner said.
Both students pursued Spanish and economics degrees at the University, and traveled with other students to Madrid for six months while studying abroad.
“It is always amazing traveling with someone who just loves to see and notice differences in other cultures,” Kershner said, “and he was amazing at that.”
Gibbs was a very sociable colleague, Kershner said, one who even held several parties at his house to help his fellow Spain-bound students get better acquainted.
“He loved it over there,” said Luis Verano, the Department of Romance Languages’ director of Undergraduate Programs. Gibbs took two advanced courses taught by Verano, who remembers the student’s presence well.
“He was very enjoyable in class and kept everyone laughing,” Verano said.
Looking back, Kershner said he is thankful to have had so many experiences with his college comrade.
“Jonathan was a wonderful friend and his death will be a terrible loss to many people,” Kershner said.
Flight 5481 was operated by Air Midwest, a carrier owned by Mesa Air Group, and operated under a marketing agreement as US Airways Express.
In a recent statement, US Airways President and CEO David Siegel said the airline doesn’t know and cannot speculate about what happened to Flight 5481, which is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. Investigators are likely to focus on the engines and the plane’s elevators — the horizontal panels on the tail that make the plane climb or descend. The board will try to determine whether the plane had an elevator malfunction that made the plane pitch up so sharply.