It's been a rough week...
JACKSONVILLE, Florida (CNN) -- The U.S. Coast Guard found the wreckage of a twin-engine Cessna floating in the Atlantic Ocean off Fernandina Beach, Florida, and retrieved the body of one of four people on the plane, Petty Officer Dana Warr said Monday.
The National Marine Fisheries Service plane, which was on a whale watch mission, had been missing off the northeast Florida coast near Jacksonville. Two men and two women were onboard, Warr said.
"We don't know the cause of the accident right now," said Warr, who added that darkness had hampered search efforts.
The routine patrol for Atlantic right whales began at St. Simons Island, Georgia, and was to end at Fernandina Beach, north of Jacksonville near the Georgia-Florida border.
The plane was reported overdue at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, and the Coast Guard found the plane's monitoring beacon a few hours later, about 8 miles east of Fernandina Beach.
"The aircraft have an emergency locator transmitter onboard," Warr said. "We started receiving that signal, and that's what we based our search off of and were able to locate the signal and the site by that device."
Warr said a backpack, life jackets and papers were found at the scene.
DELAWARE CITY, Delaware (CNN) -- A small plane crashed on a small, rocky island in the Delaware River on Sunday afternoon, officials said, catching fire and killing both people on board.
The crash happened at 5:36 p.m. on Pea Patch Island, a rocky outcrop in the river about 20 miles south of Wilmington, said a dispatcher for the New Castle County Fire Department.
The single-engine Beech Bonanza took off from Wings Field Airport near Philadelphia and was headed to Columbia, South Carolina, said Jim Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. It was on an instrument flight plan.
Ten miles south of Wilmington, he said, the pilot reported vibration in the aircraft. Air traffic controllers advised the pilot to fly into Wilmington, but the plane crashed before he got there, Peters said.
Dave Carpenter of the Delaware City Fire Company said the pilot reported to the tower at the New Castle County Airport that it was losing power and going down along the Delaware River. The last call they received was that the plane had crashed onto the island and was on fire, Carpenter said.
A man and a woman on board the plane were killed in the crash, said Lt. Tim Winstead of the Delaware State Police. Their identities were not immediately available.
Because of ice on the Delaware River, firefighters had to access the mile-long island by air, Carpenter said.
"The Delaware State Police helicopter made access with Delaware City firefighters and the aircraft fire was extinguished at approximately 6:30 p.m.," he said.
Eventually, with the help of a tugboat from a nearby pier, a fireboat from the Wilmington Fire Department and rescue boats from two area fire companies managed to reach the island and remove the victims' bodies.
The state police plan to investigate the crash further Monday, Carpenter said
