The United States Coast Guard search continues for the two people who were onboard the plane that crashed in Lake Pontchartrain Monday night. The flight instructor and the student on board that plane are presumed to be dead.
The owner of the Gulfport flight school that owned the Cessna 172-N trainer plane confirmed that the female flight instructor and the male student were in their 20s. Carastro said the instructor was "highly qualified" and was approaching the flight hours requirement to fly for commercial airlines and that the student was in the process of getting his commercial instruction license. Carastro added that "both very well liked."
According to Carastro, the debris found in the lake overnight last night matches the plane the instructor and the student were flying.
"It was an unbelievable tragedy. I've been instructing for 46 years. I've never had this . . . this is my first," Michael Carastro, owner of Apollo Flight Training, said. "We're devastated."
Carastro said some of the debris that surfaced in the lake about four miles north of the Lakefront Airport overnight Monday matched parts of the plane the flight instructor and the student were piloting.
"It's not serial numbers, per se," Carastro said. "It's interiors and this type of stuff--wing parts, interior designs, and that type of stuff."
The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct its investigation once the wreckage is recovered. Carastro said that could happen soon.
"I think they narrowed the spot down significantly right there at the last around 12:30 this morning," Carastro said. "I have high hopes that they will be recovering the airplane. It's not going to be intact at all because the impact was very, very violent. Looking at the pictures I did see, the impact was very, very violent. We really don't know what happened. Airplanes just don't fall out of the sky."
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