
A QUICK REVIEW OF THE CRASH
As the only survivor of a horrific airplane crash, Dale’s life was forever changed. As a nineteen-year-old brash young pilot in flight training, he boarded a commuter airplane out of Burbank, California along with two other pilots—carrying bank checks as cargo. Just after take-off, they violently crashed into a 100’ tall, air memorial called Portal of the Folded Wings. The first witnesses to the crash site determined that all three pilots were dead. Ironically the mausoleum is dedicated to famous, deceased pilots.
For three days Dale drifted in and out of a coma but not before taking an uncharted trip … to heaven.
What he experienced; words cannot do justice. Even the best words pale before the indescribable. For many months following the crash, due to serious amnesia, he remembered almost nothing. Nothing of the crash. Nothing of the 70-foot fall into a tangled mass of metal debris. He remembered nothing of the first three days in the hospital, nor his visit to heaven. Dale says, “For months my mind did not remember. My heart? Well, that’s a different story”.

It took 40 years for Dale to finally tell his story.
The story is written in two books:
- Flight to Heaven (2010-Bethany House) and Visiting Heaven (2023-Destiny Image). Flight to Heaven is about Dale’s crash and the miraculous recovery against all odds, lessons on how God heals and ending in the recovery of his dream to become a professional pilot.
- Visiting Heaven is the detailed and intimate account of Dale’s out-of-body experience at the crash site and in the hospital, followed by a journey to Heaven where he learned more about God and the principles of heavenly life, culminating in several adventures of faith stories, following Dale’s recovery from the crash. Each book reveals very different aspects of Dale’s journey.