NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Federal aviation investigators are continuing their work to find the cause of a weekend plane crash near Auburn that killed a Susanville couple.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office said Bruce Aldridge Rhymes, 59, and his wife Kathy Lorraine Rhymes, 58, died in the crash, which occurred Saturday at around 9 p.m. in a wooded area a mile south of the Auburn airport.
The plane involved was a single-engine, fixed-wing Cessna 170 owned by the couple, according to Federal Aviation Administration plane registry records.
National Transportation Safety Board aviation accident investigator Josh Cawthra said the couple was traveling with another plane headed for Auburn.
The first plane took off at about 5:50 p.m. Saturday from the Crazy Creek Glider Port in Middletown, with the Rhymeses’ plane following at 6 p.m., Cawthra said.
The first plane arrived in Auburn without incident. When the Rhymeses’ plane didn’t arrive, the first pilot reported it missing, according to Cawthra.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office reported that it received a call from the California Office of Emergency Services at 12:30 a.m. Sunday to assist in the search, with commercial airliners confirming that they had received a distress signal from an aircraft’s emergency locating transmitter.
The agency said the search involved a California Highway Patrol fixed wing plane and a sheriff’s deputy on the ground equipped with a handheld radio programmed with the distress signal information.
The wreckage was found close to 2 a.m., Cawthra said.
Cawthra said he arrived on scene on Sunday, with his team joining him Monday. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said that agency also has investigators who responded on Sunday to the Auburn crash site.
Cawthra and his team documented perishable evidence at the scene that could change due to conditions.
He said the plane’s wreckage was secured and taken to a Sacramento facility, where he and his team will examine it further in an effort to find out what happened.
“From there, we’ve still got a lot of work to do,” he said.
He estimated a preliminary report should be posted on the NTSB Web site this Friday.
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