The pilot of a twin-engine Cessna that plunged into the ocean off Sunset Cliffs last month, killing all six aboard, had “expressed some nervousness about the busy Southern California airspace” and made some practice runs at an Arizona airport two days before the crash.
According to a preliminary report issued Tuesday by the National Traffic Safety Board, the pilot flew to Springerville, Ariz., and picked up a friend, who was identified in the report as the plane’s “regular pilot,” and then practiced instrument procedures. The two had flown about 50 hours together in the Cessna 414.
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The friend told investigators the pilot “conducted four approaches in simulated instrument meteorological conditions,” the report said, and “appeared to be proficient during their review of the San Diego departure procedure.”
The pilot and passengers had flown from Phoenix to San Diego the day before the accident and had planned to return to Phoenix when the crash occurred June 8.
The plane went down around 12:30 p.m., shortly after taking off from San Diego International Airport.
The report details the last minutes of the flight, including communication between the pilot and an air traffic controller. After the plane climbed to about 2,000 feet over the ocean, it “made a steep descent to 200 feet,” the report said.
That prompted the air traffic controller to issue a low-altitude alert. The pilot was told to climb to 4,000 feet, a request which the pilot repeated back. The controller then asked if the pilot needed any assistance and “queried him as to the nature of the problem,” the report said.
The pilot replied that he was “struggling” to try to maintain the plane on “a heading and climb,” and the controller told him Naval Air Station North Island was about a mile away and he was cleared to divert there. But the pilot said he couldn’t see it and made “a series of erratic maneuvers before making several mayday calls,” according to the preliminary report.
The plane crashed into the ocean about 2 miles offshore.
A police helicopter was about 10 miles away when the plane went down and responded, finding the oil slick in the water. The helicopter pilot told the NTSB that he “estimated the cloud bases at roughly 800 feet” with the highest layer near 1,600 feet.
The preliminary report does not indicate the cause of the crash. The final report is expected to take up to two years to complete.
The six people who died in the crash have been identified in fundraising campaigns and media reports. Their bodies were not recovered, a spokesperson for the county Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A search for survivors was suspended after Coast Guard personnel and other agencies scoured 300 square miles of ocean for around 35 hours.
Four of the six people were members of the same Arizona family. A verified GoFundMe campaign said Jeremy Bingham and his three adult sons — Bailey, Gavin and Ayden — were aboard the plane.
The two others who died were the pilot and his pregnant wife. They were identified in media reports and in a separate GoFundMe campaign as Torrie and Landon Baldwin.
“Torrie and Landon were proud and devoted parents to two young children. Their lives were centered around their growing family,” the campaign said. It said Torrie had coached a high school tennis team and that Landon “worked hard, dreamed big, and believed in lifting others along the way.”
According to FAA records, Baldwin had been licensed as a commercial pilot since 2022.
All of the victims lived in the Gila Valley community in eastern Arizona, according to a spokesperson for a wellness company that used to own the Cessna 414. The company sold the plane two years ago to a group of unnamed individuals, the spokesperson said in June.