Authorities said the two bodies couldn’t be seen from above the water because the lake is so murky, but once the wreckage was pulled from the lake, they found the two bodies inside.
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The third person aboard the plane, a woman, was rescued from the water Saturday evening by a good Samaritan.
The airport director, Ben Morris, had said a couple chartered the plane for an aerial tour of New Orleans and that it encountered a rainstorm about the time of the crash.
A diver in the water signals to a New Orleans Fire Department boat while searching for the wreckage Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016, near the Seabrook Bridge after a plane crashed into Lake Pontchartrain Saturday night near Lakefront Airport in New Orleans.
According to local New Orleans media NOLA the plane’s remains were located on Sunday afternoon as members of the New Orleans Fire Department, New Orleans Police Department divers, U.S. Coast Guard rescue boats and also a helicopter from the United States Coast Guard continued their search for the pilot and one of the passengers who are still missing from the plane. Recovery workers used a crane to lift the plane onto the barge Tuesday morning.
It was about 1,000 feet west of the runway the Cessna was heading for when it crashed during a training exercise around 9 p.m. Friday, he said.
A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, which is assisting in the investigation, said it could take anywhere from a few months to a year before an investigation wraps up.
No more information was immediately available.
The Cessna aircraft was “on approach to landing” at Lakefront Airport, on Lake Pontchartrain, at New Orleans’ northern edge, about 10 miles from downtown, officials said.
A woman survived Saturday night’s crash but two men are still missing.
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“It’s a very sad thing, because she did tell us that she and her boyfriend were holding hands when she slipped out of the aircraft”, Morris said.
