4 bodies found inside jet that crashed at Santa Monica Airport

A Los Angeles County Coroner’s official says four bodies have been found inside the wreckage of a private jet that crashed into a hangar and burst into flames while landing at a Southern California airport.

Investigator Betsy Magdaleno says a crew is working early Tuesday to extract the bodies from the charred remains of the twin-engine Cessna 525A.

She says it’s too soon to tell if they are male or female.

The plane crashed Sunday night after arriving from Hailey, Idaho.

Mark Benjamin, CEO of Santa Monica-based Morley Construction, and his son, Luke Benjamin, a senior project manager with the company, were believed to be aboard the aircraft.

The pilot reported no mechanical trouble with a private jet from Idaho before it crashed in a hangar and burst into flames while landing at a Southern California airport, federal investigators said.

“There was no communication with the pilot indicting there’s a problem with the aircraft at any time during the flight,” Van McKenny, lead investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said Monday, a day after the twin-engine Cessna 525A crashed at Santa Monica Airport after taking off from Hailey, Idaho.

Mark Benjamin spent time in the Sun Valley area of Idaho since his youth and served on the board of directors of the Idaho Conservation League, according to the executive director of the organization, Rick Johnson. He described Benjamin as “an extraordinary, thoughtful businessperson who brought a lot of passion and energy to our organization.”

Johnson said Benjamin typically piloted a plane between the two states but did not know if he was at the controls Sunday.

McKenny said that after touching down, the pilot “veered off the right side of the runway and then as he continued down, the turn got sharper and sharper.”

The plane crashed into a row of five connected hangars about 400 feet from the end of the 5,000-foot runway, where it caught fire.

One hangar collapsed, its steel trusses crossing over the plane and the sheet metal shell wrapping around it, McKenny said. Two other hangars received minor damage.

Fire crews responded quickly because their station was almost directly behind the accident site. Still, “this was an unsurvivable crash,” Santa Monica Fire Department Capt. John Nevandro said Sunday night.

Two cranes ordered by investigators arrived Monday to lift the wrecked building off the plane before they tried to retrieve remains and the cockpit voice recorder, McKenny said.

Santa Monica Airport’s single runway sits amid residential neighborhoods of this city of more than 90,000 on the Pacific Ocean. The city and nearby residents have expressed concerns that certain types of jets with fast landing speeds could overshoot the runway and crash into homes.