Thursday 2009 Dec 10
A flight instructor and student were killed when a single-engine plane crashed down in a residential neighborhood in Ojai.
Killed in Ventura County Plane Crash
A flight instructor and student were killed Thursday afternoon after their plane went into a nose dive and plunged into the ground next to a group of homes at a theosophical school in Ojai.
The crash was reported about 2 p.m. on the campus of the Krotona Institute of Theosophy near Krotona Road. The plane crashed at the edge of a narrow driveway just as a truck was making its way through, said James Popp, a senior deputy with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.
“The driver of the truck heard a loud noise, and the next thing he knew the plane had crashed right next to the truck,” said Popp, as he stood some 200 yards away from the crumpled single-engine plane. At least two homes sat across the driveway from the wreckage.
No one was injured on the ground, and no structures were damaged, Popp said. The plane did not catch fire.
Two killed in Ojai plane crash Regina Washtiqoliqol was driving down Highway 33 when she saw the plane list. It then went down nose first and did a corkscrew spiral before hitting the ground, she said.
“There is no way it could have pulled up; it was straight down,” she said. “We went, ‘Oh my God.’”
The plane crashed about a half-mile from Nordhoff High School, Popp said.
Popp said witnesses told authorities the aircraft seemed to be having engine trouble at the time of the crash.
Sheriff’s deputies, Ventura County firefighters and a county deputy medical examiner responded to the scene.
The two-seat Piper Tomahawk — registered to Aviation Pacific Inc., a flight school at the Camarillo Airport — left the airport about 1:30 p.m., said Ian Gregor of the Federal Aviation Administration.
The pilot was not communicating with air traffic controllers at the time of the crash, and the circumstances were unknown, Gregor said.
Aviation Pacific is a flight training school with offices at the Camarillo Airport and is planning to open another facility in Mumbai, India, according to its Web site. The company encourages students from India to enroll and says it can help them coordinate visas and lodging while here.
Company employees declined to comment Thursday.
Ventura County was partly cloudy Thursday afternoon and not windy. Sheriff’s Capt. Ross Bonfiglio said weather did not appear to be a factor in the crash.
Rowena Mason, president of the Santa Paula Airport Association, said she saw a Piper Tomahawk flying over Saticoy that seemed to be coming from Camarillo and headed toward Ojai. The plane seemed to be flying fine when she passed it sometime after 1:30 p.m., she said.
FAA investigators were expected to arrive at the crash site Thursday evening. The federal agency will investigate the incident along with the National Transportation Safety Board.
There have been four fatal airplane accidents in Ventura County in the past five years, according to the NTSB. In 2002, six people were killed when two single-engine planes, flying in a group of eight aircraft, crashed into a canyon wall northwest of Oja