FAA Doctor Among 4 Victims Killed in Crash of Small Plane

The pilot of a single-engine plane that plunged into the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff from Santa Monica, killing four people, was identified on Thursday as a Marina del Rey family physician who also spent the last 25 years certifying the health of pilots for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Dr. Norman Edwin Rubinstein, 61, and his wife, June Rubinstein, also 61, died in Wednesday’s crash, along with another couple, Satinder Kumar Verma, 56, and his wife, Marian Jane Verma, 51, of Huntington Beach.

Work crews strapped flotation devices to the six-seat Cessna 210 on Thursday to partially raise it from its resting place 110 feet below the surface of the ocean. After seas became rough, the plane was towed to the Venice Beach shore, where inspectors from the National Transportation Safety Board began examining it.

There was no immediate indication of why Rubinstein’s plane crashed. When he took off from Santa Monica Airport about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday the sky was overcast but visibility was good, according to lifeguards on duty.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said he believed that Rubinstein was flying under “visual flight rules,” which do not require the pilot to tell airport officials where he is headed.

A sailing instructor and a group of students saw the plane drop into the water about a mile and a half southwest of the Venice pier. The witnesses hailed a sport-fishing boat, which radioed county harbor officials for help.

As an FAA-certified medical examiner, Rubinstein held a first-class certificate that authorized him to examine commercial airline pilots as well as private pilots.

For the last three years he had written a medical advice column for Aviation Safety magazine.

“He was one of the best medical advice writers in aviation,” said David Shugarts, the publication’s editor. “I think the fact that he was a general practitioner imparted a certain kind of wisdom.”

Brian Weiss, a Santa Monica writer who also works for the magazine, said he knew Rubinstein as “a cautious and considerate pilot. There is a general syndrome among physician-pilots to be a bit of a ‘hot dog,’ but that did not apply to Norm at all.”

Donna Young, who was Rubinstein’s office manager and secretary since 1963, said he flew “quite often for a doctor with a busy practice.”