Two Dead, One Possibly Missing after Plane Crashes off Santa Monica Shore

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

March 13 -- Two people are dead and a third person possibly missing after a plane which took off from Santa Monica Airport crashed nearly 200 yards off Santa Monica's shoreline Monday morning.

The single-engine aircraft -- which was permanently parked at Santa Monica airport -- was destined for San Diego and apparently circled around back towards the local airport to make an emergency landing only eight minutes into the flight, according to investigators and Santa Monica airport officials.

The flight turned tragic when the plane -- which can hold up to six people -- crashed into the sea at at a high rate of speed, skipped like a rock once, promptly came to a halt in one piece and began instantly sinking in the murky waters, according to Santa Monica and Los Angeles County Fire Department officials and several witnesses who saw the events unfold around 9:40 Monday morning.

Two Santa Monica Beach maintenance workers were the first on the scene and called emergency officials who arrived within minutes of the crash.

"We were on the sand when I saw out of the corner of my eye this plane coming towards the beach, flying really low," said Santa Monica beach maintenance worker Rita Ruiz.

"It wasn't making any sound when it the hit water at a high rate of speed, then spun around and landed pointing away from the beach," she said. "Then the nose went in and it started to sink."

At this point, Ruiz and her colleague, Demetrius Nickerson, called 911 and considered going into the cold waters to try and help the victims.

"But the plane was just too far out there," said Nickerson. "If they had made it to the beach, which is what it looked like it was headed for, or even to water closer to shore, we could have helped them."

Despite the efforts of two lifeguards who swam out to the crash site on surfboards within minutes after the crash, it was too late.

Two adults, one male and one female, were recovered from the wreck. One was declared dead at the scene, while the other -- who was not breathing and had no pulse when pulled from the water by divers -- was declared dead a short time later.

Los Angeles County Fire Captain Mark Savage did not elaborate on why they believed there to be a third person in the airplane or who that person was, however Santa Monica Airport officials said there were three people scheduled for the flight.

"We know the flight plan had three souls on board," said Airport manager Bob Trimborn. "We don't know how many showed up for the flight."

Informing Airport officials who is actually aboard planes when they take off is not mandatory in many cases, except in commercial flights, according to Federal Airport Administration rules, Trimborn said.

"Obviously it's not looking good unless there was a pocket of air down there or something." said Captain Savage. "It's obviously a tragedy."

The pilot had contacted the Santa Monica's Airport tower eight minutes after it took off at 9:32. requesting to land at the airport and declaring an emergency at approximately 9:40. The pilot did not elaborate on the situation, said Triborne.

"The communications were very brief," he said, adding that investigators do not know the nature of the emergency, saying it could have been any number of situations including a medical incident or mechanical malfunction.

After Los Angeles County hands over the reigns of the investigation to the National Transportation Safety Board, there will be a full investigation into what caused the accident, he said.

The airport would be the preferred area to stage an emergency landing, Trimborn said. However, he added, any safe location would be satisfactory. If a pilot can not reach the airport, then it would be more favorable to land on a deserted beach than in the ocean.

"When you land in water, you stop almost instantly," he said.

Several eyewitnesses said the strip of beach where the plane appeared to be headed was deserted. The same witnesses said they heard no sound, and speculated that it seemed to them that the plane was gliding in.

However Trimborn said it is best at this point not to jump to conclusions, and that planes, as is the case with cars, can make very little noise if there is no gas being applied.

"Eye witness accounts of the aircraft accident are all over the map. Anything could have happened, he said.

Within an hour after the wreck, a Coast Guard Cutter and nearly a dozen smaller boats were bobbing in the surf between lifeguard stands 27 and 28, almost due west of Ocean Park Boulevard.

A slew of Santa Monica and LA County emergency vehicles and news vans commandeered the beach parking lot, while four media helicopters buzzed overhead when the bodies were recovered.

A few hundred feet from shore, divers could be seen submerging and reemerging from the water where the flight wreckage had sunk to the bottom in 19 feet of water.

The news of the tragic events unnerved some area residents who have voiced alarm about safety issues at the Santa Monica Airport for several years.

"We're in the flight path here, and it's quite a concern," said Kathy Larson, who is co-chair of Friends of Sunset Park neighborhood group on airport safety.

She added that even though it is was a small plane that landed in the ocean, it could have just have been a larger plane that crashed in Santa Monica somewhere "taking out homes and businesses," she said.

The last time a plane crashed -- killing the pilot -- was in the Mar Vista neighborhood to the east of Santa Monica airport on a foggy day in 2004. Two other incidents involved planes crashing into an apartment building in Fairfax and a plane that went off the runway at Santa Monica Airport, according to Larson, who has become a local expert of sorts on airport safety.

Larson noted that for several years, jet traffic has increased to the point where in 2005, there were approximately 18,000 jet operations a year.

"The larger the plane, the larger the swathe of damage," she said.

It was an unforeseeable tragedy, said Trimborn, adding that if it was an automobile collision, the amount of attention dedicated to the incident would have been much less.

He also said that the FAA does not have the resources, means or will to double check on flight plans to assure that they are accurate once a flight has taken off in non-commercial flights.

"These are private operators in private planes," he said.

Having an accurate manifest, though, may help search and rescue personnel on the ground know when to call off a search, once all the individuals are accounted for, Trimborn said.

He did not elaborate what the situation would be if more people showed up for a flight than what was voluntarily accounted for in their flight plan.

At the time of this report, rescue crews were still searching for a third person that may have never made the flight.

For the witnesses who said they were the first to see the event unfold, one thought stuck in their minds after the accident.

"They almost made it," said Nickerson. "Whoever was in that plane, the effort to make it to land seemed clear."