The pilot of a twin-engine plane was not given clearance at Catalina Airport to take off shortly before the plane crashed about a mile away, killing all five on board, an airport authority said Thursday, Oct. 10.
The airport’s operating hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, but pilots can arrive and depart after 5 p.m. before sunset so long as they pre-arrange with airport management, the airport’s general manager, Carl True, said.
“He pre-arranged for his arrival after 5 p.m.,” True said, “but not for the takeoff and he was advised of that.”
True did not identify the pilot, referring a reporter to the medical examiner’s office.
Three of the plane’s occupants were identified by medical examiner’s officials Thursday. They were Ali Reza Safai, 73, of West Hills, who owned the plane, Haris Ali, 33, of Fullerton and Margaret Mary Renner, 55.
The other two occupants were identified as men in their 30s, pending notification of their relatives.
It was not known Thursday who was piloting the plane.
Photos released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Special Enforcement Bureau showed some of the wreckage, including that the plane’s tail appeared to have broken off.
Safai was a flight instructor at Santa Monica Airport who ran Santa Monica Aviation before closing its doors in 2018, according to a report by the National Business Aviation Association. It wasn’t yet known if he was the one piloting the plane, which arrived from Santa Monica to Catalina Island about 6:20 p.m. Tuesday, according to flight-tracking data.
A statement released Wednesday, Oct. 9, to television stations from Proteus Flight school, another Santa Monica airport business, said Safai still kept his plane at the airport and was helping Proteus members who were stranded on the island.
“His spirit of camaraderie and generosity was evident when he learned that a Proteus airplane was stranded at Catalina Airport due to mechanical issues yesterday,” Proteus said in the statement reported by KTLA. “Without hesitation, he volunteered to assist in retrieving the stranded occupants, who were left without transport or lodging at the top of Catalina Island.”
The crash occurred shortly after takeoff around 8 p.m. about a mile west of the airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, adding in a Wednesday morning update that the Beechcraft 95 crashed under unknown circumstances.
Deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Avalon Station received an S.O.S. message from the cellphone of one of the plane’s occupants notifying them that a crash had occurred, sheriff’s officials said.
All five occupants were adults, officials said.
The airport, which also goes by Airport in the Sky, sits 1,600 feet above sea level and has a 3,000-foot-long runway. It operates from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and is generally closed to airplane operations outside of those times.
“When the deputies and the search and rescue and the fire guys all got there, they saw the tail of the plane down about 300 feet,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Grayson Kline told KTLA. “You couldn’t see it from the road.”
Rose Schoenfeld, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Oxnard office, said conditions at the airport were clear with 10 miles of visibility and light winds.
“To the best of our knowledge, this is not a weather-related incident,” she said.
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