Plane Crash Victim Was a French Citizen

A woman killed with four others in a Christmas Eve plane crash on Catalina Island was identified Tuesday as a 44-year-old French citizen whose two children may have perished with her, the coroner’s office said.

Francine Gaume of Archon, a town about 70 miles northwest of Paris, was positively identified as among the victims of the crash of a small plane into a mountainside near the island’s landing strip, said Los Angeles County coroner’s office spokesman David Campbell. Gaume’s body was ejected from the plane, he said.

The four other people aboard included two children who had not been positively identified but who appeared to be between the ages of 8 and 12, Campbell said, adding that further examinations and consultations with a forensic dentist were planned.

Also aboard the plane were two men, both of whom were licensed pilots certified to fly commercial aircraft, said Patrick Jones, the National Transportation Safety Board investigator on the case.

“This was not a case of a student pilot and a flight instructor,” Jones added.

Authorities said the crash wreckage burned, further complicating positive identification of the victims, some of whose dental records were not readily available because offices were closed for the holidays.

The plane, a twin-engine Piper Seneca, crashed about 1.5 miles southwest of the tiny mountain airport at 10:20 a.m. It had departed Long Beach Airport at 9:54 a.m. and its pilot -- authorities did not state which of the two men -- encountered light rain, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The pilot reported poor visibility of the runway and, after failing on his first attempt to land, opted to make a second attempt, an FAA spokesman said.

Instead, the plane crashed into Mt. Orizaba right beside the tiny Airport in the Sky.

The airport is privately operated by the Catalina Island Conservancy, has no air traffic tower and is not a commercial airfield, authorities said.

The NTSB’s Jones said the plane struck the mountainside at about 2,000 feet. The cause of the crash will not be determined for some time.

The plane crash was the sixth aviation accident since 2000 on the island or in the waters between it and the mainland, Jones said, but it is only the second involving fatalities in that time.

On Aug. 2, 2002, a plane bound for the Catalina airport crashed offshore, killing two aboard.