Pilot Dan Neuman and passengers Jason Baldwin, Jeff TenEyck and Rick Olavson were returning from Mexico, where they had been at the Baja 1000, an off-road racing event.
Authorities do not know what caused the crash, and Neuman's friends and colleagues were equally puzzled. Witnesses reported seeing the plane spiraling nose-first into the ocean.
A plane can enter into a spin if the engine stalls out, but the spin can be corrected with a simple maneuver, said Reza Malek, a flight instructor at Royal Aviation flight school
Neuman was the chief flight instructor at Royal Aviation and also taught flying at Orange Coast College. He had 17 years of teaching experience.
"If you don't know how to recover from a spin, it can be fatal," Malek said. But if anyone knew how to get out of a spin, it was Neuman.
"We call him 'Dan the Man.' He knew everything about airplanes," Malek said. "He would not get himself into that situation [a spin] in the first place."
With Neuman at the helm, even a total engine failure wouldn't send the plane down so suddenly, Malek said, adding that small planes can glide a certain distance without engine power.
"If the engine fails, it dies -- the plane doesn't drop like a rock," Malek said.
If Neuman knew the plane was going down, he would have aimed for the shore, said Malek. It is a cardinal rule of flight that it's always better to put a plane down on land than on water.
The single-engine, fixed-wing Cessna 210 took off from San Felipe, Mexico, and made a stop at San Diego's Brown Field Municipal Airport. It was bound for John Wayne Airport, U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Tony Migliorini said.
The plane was registered to Newport Beach company TR Builder Corp., which is owned by Baldwin's father, James Baldwin, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
