Steve Appleton, the chairman and CEO of Micron Technology died today in a small plane crash.  Appleton, a professional stunt plane pilot and former motocross racer, was the only one in the plane when it crashed.

Micron Technology is a global maker of DRAM, NAND and NOR flash memory.

The company’s stock (MU) which trades on the NASDAQ was halted and up nearly 3% on the day. Appleton was 51 years old. He joined Micron in 1983 and became chairman and CEO in 2007.

Appleton started on the factory floor at Micron in 1983 and worked his way up. In 1991, he was named president and chief operating officer, and in 1994 he was named chairman, chief executive officer and president. He assumed his current position in 2007. Micron, based in Boise, has 20,000 employees worldwide and is one of Idaho’s largest employers.

The company issued the following statement:

“Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community and the technology industry at large.”

In a recent blog post (http://wikibon.org/blog/get-ready-for-project-lightning/) Wikibon’s Dave Vellante indicated that Micron was one of the suppliers of flash cards to EMC’s Project Lightning.

I’m headed to the announcement on Monday in SFO to learn more about this technology. I talked to Vellante and he said he didn’t expect any supply chain impact from Appleton’s demise as this is a small part of Micron’s overall business. He pointed out that Micron is one of the world’s most important suppliers of memory systems including DRAMs, flash memory, CMOS and other memory technologies.

Flash is a key part of Micron’s long term growth plan. On the latest earnings call, Appleton said SSD revenues grew 60%. Further, speaking about Micron’s joint venture with Intel for NAND products he indicated:

“IMFS continues to ramp and perform well. As we had mentioned the last quarter, I think within a month, we should be at full wafer starts. It’s all going really according to plan, better than planned…this facility has been ramping on our MLC technology. So I’d just point out that, obviously, that helps us a lot on the cost, but a lot of that product by virtue of the channel that goes into also lowers the average ASP for those, for the overall NAND bit.”

Traditionally, enterprise class flash has been SLC (Single Layer Cell) technology whereas the Multi Layer Cell (MLC) that Appleton spoke about on the last call has been more consumer-oriented. According to analysts, EMC has qualified MLC flash which will provide continued cost advantages for flash in the enterprise.

It’s sad to see such a dedicated leader who has been with the company so long pass.

Update:  Eric Savitz at Forbes has more details – http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/02/03/micron-ceo-steve-appleton-dies-in-small-plane-accident/