Oceanside
Federal Aviation Administration officials are still investigating why a private plane flown by a Sacramento area couple crashed off Oceanside on Monday night.
A search for survivors of the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza was called off early Tuesday morning after Marines found the bodies of a Folsom couple on a beach near Camp Pendleton, officials said.
They were identified as Robert Hodges, 64, and his wife, Florence, 65, coroner’s deputies said.
Investigators confirmed that the bodies, found during training exercises, were the crash victims.
The plane was en route to Montgomery Field in San Diego when it disappeared from radar screens about 7:40 p.m., Lt. John Sullivan, a Coast Guard spokesman, said.
Swede Gamble, an aviation safety inspector for the FAA, said the plane was flown by Robert Hodges, who apparently had been a pilot since the 1940s, according to friends who were interviewed Tuesday by the FAA.
Coast Guard rescue teams and a Marine Corps helicopter had searched unsuccessfully Monday night for the plane, Sullivan said.
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