Airport Tower Tried to Contact Plane before Crash

By Jorge Casuso

March 17 -- A local air traffic controller at Santa Monica Airport tried nine times to contact a single-engine plane carrying an elderly Malibu couple before it crashed into a two-story house in Mar Vista late Tuesday afternoon, airport officials said Wednesday.

It is a mystery why the 72-year-old pilot -- who was accompanied by his 62-year-old wife on their way from Mammoth -- failed to respond or call the airport tower, said Robert Trimborn, the Santa Monica Airport manager.

“That’s the thing we don’t understand -- why there was no communication with the tower,” Trimborn said.

The reasons for the crash may not be determined for at least a year, he added.

Following routine, Southern California Terminal Radar Control in San Diego had made contact as the plane approached for landing and asked the pilot to call the Santa Monica Airport control tower, Trimborn said.

“During the step down approach to Santa Monica Airport, they direct the pilot towards Santa Monica and then advise (him) to contact the tower,” he said.

Radar control then routinely contacted the local airport controller to advise him that a plane was approaching for landing, Trimborn said. When the local tower controller failed to hear from the pilot, he repeatedly tried to contact him.

“1184 vista, Santa Monica Tower, how do you hear,” Trimborn said the controller repeated nine times.

“There was no response,” Trimborn said. “We don’t understand why.

“Something happened between the time they assigned him to the Santa Monica tower and the accident that we don’t know,” he said.

It often takes the National Transportation Safety Board 12, even 18 months or longer, to “determine the cause” of an accident, Trimborn said.

After losing touch with the San Diego control tower at around 5 p.m., the four-seat plane skimmed a rooftop, caromed off a garage and careened into the first floor of a two-story home, bursting into flames.

The plane -- which according to federal aviation authorities, was built in 1982 and registered to a man from Ashland, Oregon -- crashed between 400 and 500 yards from the runway, as dense fog covered the area.

A couple with a child lived in the home hit by the plane. The man, who was home alone, escaped without injuries. No one else on the ground was hurt.

Some 60 firefighters extinguished the blaze in about 20 minutes, according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey.

Neighbor James Whiting said he was walking in his living room when he felt “an enormous shudder and crash about 10 to 15 feet behind me.

“Where the kitchen had been was an enormous, orange ball of flames,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

Neighbors reported hearing a plane circling overhead several times before it crashed.

”It was just shocking,” said Al Farhoodi, 18, who was walking nearby. “It was surreal, actually. It just exploded all over the place.”

The County Coroner has not released the names of the pilot and his wife pending notification of their family.

Wire stories contributed to this report.