Small Plane Dives Into Sea; 1 Dead, 3 Believed Missing

One man was killed Monday when a single-engine private airplane crashed into the sea about a mile off the Goleta Pier, near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus.

Campus Police Chief Randy Lingle said eyewitnesses told him that the airplane appeared to be making a landing approach through light fog to the north-south runway at Santa Barbara Municipal Airport when it suddenly nosed down and crashed into the water at about 2:45 p.m.

Charley McCoy of Santa Barbara, who was jogging on the beach at the time, said everything appeared to be normal just before the crash.

“The engine sounded like it was running properly,” he said. “It didn’t sound like it was sputtering at all. It (the plane) went straight down . . . almost like a kamikaze.”

One Body Recovered

The body of a man, believed to be in his 50s, was recovered by commercial fisherman Don Webb, who brought it to the Goleta Pier.

Webb said he heard the crash, but did not see it because of an offshore fog bank. He also picked up the aircraft log book from a Cessna airplane, which he turned over to authorities.

Lingle said the book would be used in an effort to establish the identity of victim or victims and the origin of the flight, but he declined to give any other information pending further investigation. Lingle said witnesses told him they saw four persons in the plane, but a man who identified himself as the son of the pilot indicated his father was alone in the aircraft.

A spokesman for the airport said he had no information about the crash and was not aware of any incoming flight that had not been accounted for.

Rescue boats of the U.S. Coast Guard were dispatched to the area, and were joined by a UC Santa Barbara rescue boat, boats of the Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol and county lifeguards and a Navy helicopter, and authorities issued a call for divers.