May 01--Authorities found a second body Tuesday as they continued to investigate the wreckage of a plane that crashed after hitting another small aircraft in the skies above Calabasas.
The body of the pilot was found Monday night in the mangled wreckage near Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The second body was found in the plane Tuesday morning, officials said.
Authorities had not yet released the victims' names.
The plane crashed Monday afternoon after a midair collision with another plane, which made an emergency landing at Westlake Golf Course in Westlake Village. Its three occupants, whose names also were not released, sustained minor injuries.
Howard Plagens, a senior investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a Tuesday news conference that both planes were single-engine Cessna 172s that took off from Santa Monica Municipal Airport and collided about 2 p.m. above an unincorporated area of Calabasas near Malibu Creek State Park, not near Ventura as originally reported.
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The plane that crashed left the airport at 1:40 p.m. on a test flight, but it was unclear where it was heading, Plagens said.
The plane that landed in Westlake took off about 1:53 p.m., heading to Camarillo with three certified flight instructors who were part of the Ameriflyers flight school based in Santa Monica. The flight school could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Maintenance workers at Channel Islands Aviation at the Camarillo Airport said it's common for planes to fly to Camarillo for training because the skies are less congested there.
Plagens did not elaborate on how or why the planes collided in midair but said the first aircraft crashed immediately while the other drifted to the west before going off the radar. "It went in there pretty steep," Plagens said.
"This is just preliminary," he said. "From what we've seen, they were not in contact with anyone and were not required to be in contact with anyone in the air space."
The Westlake plane was flying at about 3,400 feet and the other at about 3,300 feet before they collided, officials said.
Everado Corral, a maintenance worker at the golf course, said he was trimming trees when he saw the plane land on the lawn. He said the plane glided over trees and landed near the third hole. He saw three people get out of the plane one by one, and one of them had blood on his hands.
Golf shop manager Chris Vatcher, 54, of Thousand Oaks was also working Monday when the plane came down. He learned of the crash only after golfers came in to report what they had seen.
"People ran into the shop and said there's a plane flying 10 feet over the range nets and it's going to crash," Vatcher said Tuesday. "People just couldn't believe it."
The nets on the golf range are about 70 feet tall, Vatcher said.
Vatcher said it was a miracle that the three survived without serious injuries and that no one on the golf course was hurt.
That plane was registered to Texas-based Ameriflyers, while the other was registered to Edward Berlin of Santa Monica, according to FAA records.
Crews at the Westlake site Tuesday removed the remaining fuel from the plane and took it apart in pieces. Authorities were expected to continue examining both sites and collecting plane parts Wednesday.
The Los Angeles County fire and sheriff's departments, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB, are investigating the incident.
Todd McNamee, director of airports for Ventura County, said none of those involved in Monday's incident were tenants at the Camarillo Airport, and he is not aware of any of them communicating with the tower there.
He said that while people flying in or near Ventura County can coordinate with air traffic control, it is not required. "It's at the pilot's discretion," McNamee said.
He said he was not aware of any recent midair collisions in Los Angeles or Ventura counties.
Copyright 2013 - Ventura County Star, Calif.
