Plane Crashes in Fog Near Border; 6 Die

A small chartered airplane attempting to land at the Tijuana airport in heavy fog early Wednesday crashed into a hillside near the U.S.-Mexico border, killing all six people on board.

Officials said the dead included the pilot, a Mexican national; two American technicians who worked for Berkeley/Tait Pumps, a Bay Area manufacturing firm, and three Japanese officials of Exportadora de Sal, a Mexico-based company owned by Mexican and Japanese interests that exports salt from Baja California, mostly to Japan.

Business Trip

The men were returning from a business trip to a salt mine at Guerrero Negro, on the Baja peninsula about 320 miles south of the border, authorities said.

After arriving in Tijuana, the men were apparently going to the salt company’s purchasing office in San Diego, and afterward were expected to catch flights from San Diego to their homes, a company official said.

The crash was the worst in San Diego County since 1979, when 10 people were killed in the crash of a small plane near San Ysidro, officials said.

Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were combing through the wreckage seeking clues for the cause of the crash, but as of Wednesday afternoon there was no official word about what went awry.

Speculation centered on the foggy conditions, but officials declined to comment on a cause.

“It’s too early to know what went wrong,” said Scott Crosier, an aviation safety investigator with the FAA.

The twin-engine aircraft, a Mexican-registered Cessna 340, smashed into the isolated hill in San Diego’s Otay Mesa area at about 8 a.m., officials said. Border Patrol agents, hampered in their search by the heavy fog, reached the wreckage at about 8:40 a.m. on a site about 50 feet from the crest of a mesa situated along the airport approach, authorities said.

There was no fire at the scene, and no one on the ground was injured.

The crash site is a rugged canyon area--known as the soccer field on the U.S. side and as Zapata Canyon in Mexico--favored as a staging area by migrants who seek to cross into the United States illegally. It is about 1 1/2 miles west of Tijuana International Airport, said Miguel Araiza, chief of radar approach control at the airport. Araiza said the aircraft was landing by instruments because of the low visibility.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the aircraft at 7:56 a.m., Araiza said, about 30 seconds before the anticipated touchdown. The airport official estimated visibility at half a mile.

The plane was arriving after a flight of almost two hours from Guerrero Negro, airport officials said. The aircraft was owned by Aero Servicios de Sonora, an air-taxi service based in Hermosillo, Mexico, and rented by the salt company, officials said.

Various chunks of wreckage, including the twisted remains of the fuselage, wings and engines, were spread along an area about 200 yards north of the border, as were pieces of luggage and papers.

All of the victims were believed to have died upon impact.

The two Americans were identified as Manuel Hernandez, 51, of Oakland, and Ramon Schoenberg, 59, of Richmond, Calif. Both were employees of Berkeley/Tait Pumps who were being shown pumps at the mine, officials said.

The Mexican pilot was identified as Raul Gutierrez Tellez, 24, from the Mexican state of Sonora.

The Japanese victims, all said to be residents of Tokyo, were: Hideo Omachi, 41, Yoshihito Kodani, 65, and Katsuo Sugimoto, who was about 55 years old. All were representatives of Exportadora de Sal, which is 51% Mexican-owned and 49% Japanese-owned, according to a company spokeswoman.