Search for crash survivors ends

PORT RICHEY, Fla. - What caused a small plane carrying five people to go down in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday afternoon remained a mystery on Thursday, though The Coast Guard says there's no mistaking the aftermath.

"Relatively small pieces of airplane leads us to believe it was a pretty catastrophic impact where the aircraft appears to have hit the surface of the ocean," explains Captain Timothy Close with The U.S. Coast Guard.

According to The Federal Aviation Administration, air traffic controllers lost contact with the twin engine Cessna after it reported turbulence at 1:52 p.m. on Wednesday. A forecaster at the National Weather Service confirms there were thunderstorms and lightning in the area.

Though they can't confirm what caused the crash, officials do say bad weather could certainly have given the plane trouble.

"Most planes of this size and that vintage are equipped with radar," according to Dr. Dan Greenwald, a private pilot.

Greenwald, who has more than 30 years of experience flying, says a Cessna 421C like the one that went down would have been equipped with the proper radar to detect storms -- something any pilot would steer clear of.

"Every pilot knows you avoid thunderstorms. There are tremendous forces of nature there and you don't tangle with them," added Greenwald.

Greenwald says inside the plane pilots have tools to help them avoid bad weather and lightning during the flight. Even if all of those tools failed, and the pilot didn't know about the storm until it was right in front of their eyes, there's always a last resort.

"We know, as pilots, that if you fly into something you don't like, execute the 180, turn around, get out of it," explains Greenwald.

The FAA is investigating, though the NTSB hasn't sent an investigator to the scene. The Coast Guard says because the pieces of the plane are so small and scattered, determining what happened may be nearly impossible.

The Pinellas Medical Examiner's office said the remains were "fragments," which must be identified by DNA. That process will require comparison to DNA samples from family members, a process that is likely to take weeks.