Plane Wreckage and 3 Bodies Located in Ocean

A salvage team and Orange County Sheriff’s Department divers Thursday afternoon found the bodies of three victims and the wreckage of their small airplane that crashed into the ocean off Newport Pier on Sunday night.

Divers recovered bodies of two men but were unable to remove the third, strapped into a seat, because of failing light and a “problem with the seat belt,” Lt. William Miller of the Sheriff’s Department said.

Divers will try to extract the remaining body at 7 a.m. today, when the tide is low and the light should be better, Miller said. If divers still are unable to free the body, it will be raised with the plane later in the morning, he added.

The plane’s fuselage was found shortly after noon Thursday, about a third of a mile southwest of the Newport Pier and under 58 feet of water, Miller said.

One of the retrieved bodies was found inside the plane and the other was located on the ocean floor, Miller said. However, a coroner’s deputy said that both bodies were found outside the airplane.

Victims Identified

Deputy Coroner Ted Sullivan identified the victims as Phillip Burdette Peffley, 20, of Irvine and Benigno Villa, 38, of Costa Mesa. Peffley was a flight instructor for Aero Flight Center, a school and plane-rental company based at John Wayne Airport.

Still missing and presumed dead is student pilot Barry John King, 32, of Newport Beach.

Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board still have not determined who was flying the plane at the time of the crash. The NTSB is looking into the personality traits of the training pilot and the student pilot because such studies could indicate what a person is likely to do while flying a plane, according to Donald Llorente, a senior NTSB investigator.

The plane, a rented, single-engine Piper Archer, appeared to be on a “strafing run” when its right wing clipped the water and sent the plane cartwheeling into the ocean about 11:15 p.m. Sunday, Llorente said. Witnesses told him that the plane had flown over several residences at extremely low altitudes and then rose to about 175 feet as it passed over the Newport Pier and turned sharply toward the ocean.

Hit Water at 100 M.P.H.

King had hired Peffley to fly Sunday evening, and Villa, an acquaintance of King, was invited to go along. King’s wife told Llorente that her husband had had previous night-flying experience, which is required to qualify for a private pilot’s license.

The plane’s main landing gear and right front seat were recovered earlier this week. Damage to those parts indicated that the plane “hit the water in a right, nose-dive banking turn . . . in excess of 100 m.p.h.,” Llorente said.

The craft then began “cartwheeling to the left,” and the cockpit may have been ripped open upon impact, he said.

A private salvage company, Champion Air Salvage of Oceanside, for several days had been zeroing in on the plane, said David LaMontagne, president of Vessel Assist Assn. of America, a Costa Mesa-based boater assistance organization that was coordinating the salvage operation. The Cobra, Champion’s 32-foot salvage vessel, had been dragging a cable in an attempt to snag the craft and using a depth sounder, which is similar to a radar scope, LaMontagne said.

“The first day they knew more or less where it was” within a 100-yard-square area, he said. “But they had to keep pinpointing it and pinpointing it.”

The plane is resting on the slope of an ocean floor canyon, he said.

The salvage crew will raise the plane by attaching deflated air bags to the main structural beams of the craft and then slowly inflating them, LaMontagne said. Small aircraft are “not very heavy,” in contrast with other objects--such as boats--raised from the ocean floor, he added.