All six people aboard a Cessna that crashed Sunday off Point Loma died in the wreck, according to the FAA.
The twin-engine Cessna 414 came down shortly after takeoff, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a report issued on Monday.
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The twin-engine Cessna 414 crashed at around 12:30 p.m. Sunday, the FAA said. The plane was returning to Phoenix one day after flying out from Arizona, according to the flight tracking website Flightaware.com.
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SIGN UP The Coast Guard said searchers found a debris field later Sunday about 5 miles (8 kilometers) off the coast of Point Loma, a San Diego neighborhood that juts into the Pacific, U.S. Coast Guard officials. The water in the search area is about 200 feet (61 meters) deep.
The victims
According to his sister, the pilot's name was Landon Baldwin, a resident of Safford, Arizona. Baldwin's wife, Torrie, was among the five passengers, the sister said.
The couple were the parents of two small children. According to published reports, a male passenger was also on the aircraft with his three children.
Local
NBC 7 is still working to confirm the names of the other passengers, but they are all believed to be from Arizona.
The FAA said the plane is owned by vitamin and nutritional supplement maker Optimal Health Systems. But the company based in Pima, Arizona, said in a statement that it sold the plane to a group of private individuals in 2023, meaning the FAA database could be out of date.
However, the company’s founder, Doug Grant, said in the statement that, “We personally know several of the passengers onboard and our sincerest condolences are offered to those affected by the tragedy, all of whom are incredible members of our small community.”
The FAA referred questions about the plane’s ownership to the National Transportation Safety Board, which didn’t immediately provide any further details about the crash.
A local pilot's response
Landon Baldwin told air traffic controllers that he was struggling to maintain his heading and climb as the plane twice turned toward shore before going back out to sea, according to audio posted by www.LiveATC.net and radar data posted by FlightAware. The controller urged the pilot to climb to 4,000 feet after he reported the plane was only about 1,000 feet in the air.
The controller directed Baldwin to land at a nearby U.S. naval airport on Coronado Island, but the pilot said he was unable to see the airport. A short time later, Baldwin repeatedly signaled the “Mayday” distress call before controllers lost radar contact.
Robert Katz, an experienced pilot with 43 years experience who is also a flight instructor, shared his observations about the crash with NBC 7 on Monday.
“Given the empirical evidence that we have at the moment, it appears to me that this pilot was spatially disoriented, given the fact that this happened so quick after departure and the tenor of this pilot’s voice in how he was communicating with [air traffic control]," Katz said, adding that cockpit photos of the plane that went down tell him it was well-equipped and that he did not think there was a mechanical failure.
“Had this been engine failure, I believe this pilot would have been quick to report that fact, because when an engine fails in a twin-engine airplane, the workload to control the airplane becomes immediately, exponentially greater,” Katz said.
Katz also said that hearing Landon Baldwin's voice made him believe that Baldwin knew his plane was going down.Although the FAA said all six people on board the plane were killed, authorities haven’t identified them.
A witness to the crash
A man who was out surfing when the plane crashed told NBC 7 in San Diego that he saw the plane come down at an angle, then climb back into the clouds before diving again and crashing into the water.
“The next time he came out of the clouds, he went straight into the water. But after I saw this splash, about six seconds later, it was dead silent. I knew that they went in the water, nose first, at a high speed,” Tyson Wislofsky said.
The crash comes weeks after a small Cessna crashed into a San Diego neighborhood in foggy weather and killed six people.
NBC 7's Allison Ash contributed to this report — Ed.
