6 Died Instantly When Plane Plummeted to the Ground : Accident: Investigators find no evidence of fuel in the Cessna 310’s tanks. The craft was en route to Van Nuys Airport.

Standing amid the strewn remains of a twin-engine plane and the belongings of its passengers Monday morning, authorities said all six people on board died instantly when the Cessna 310 plummeted to the ground in a sparsely developed industrial area here.

The plane crashed about 8 p.m. Sunday just one minute after requesting landing instructions from the tower at Fox Field, about six miles northwest of the crash site. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said there was no evidence of fuel in the plane’s tanks, but would not say whether the crash was related to the lack of fuel.

A NTSB investigator said the aircraft impacted in a stall-spin, indicating that there was a loss of control during flight.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office has not yet positively identified any of the bodies, although family members said Israel Feldman, 34, of Sherman Oaks and his fiance, Orit Mormi, were among the victims. Feldman was believed to be the pilot.

Scott Carrier, a coroner’s spokesman, said there were three females and three males, aged 16-34, on board when the plane crashed on Avenue H-6, a lightly traveled street in a sparsely developed industrial area, between Sierra Highway and Division Street.

“They’re very badly mutilated,” said Carrier, adding that dental records would probably be necessary to positively identify some of the six victims.

Yehiam Konski, the owner of the Van Nuys-based Cessna 310, built in 1963, said he rented the plane to Feldman and believed that it was Feldman who was piloting it at the time of the crash.

The plane was returning to Van Nuys Airport after an overnight pleasure trip to Las Vegas.

According to Alex Elnekaveh, Orit Mormi’s brother-in-law, Mormi and Feldman were due to be married on Aug. 8 at his Encino home. Mormi turned 30 July 1.

According to Elnekaveh, Feldman was asked by an Israeli family to fly them to Las Vegas. He said Mormi called him on Saturday evening to say they had arrived in Nevada safely.

Elnekaveh was supposed to pick up Feldman, who owned a Sherman Oaks heavy equipment business, and Mormi at Van Nuys Airport Sunday at 8 p.m. Shortly before he was due to leave for the airport, he turned on the television news and heard that a small plane had crashed. He tried unsuccessfully to find out whether it was the plane carrying his sister-in-law.

“I made 200 phone calls,” he said.

It was not until Monday morning that officials notified him of the deaths.

Mormi came to the United States several months ago to marry Feldman. The couple planned to return to Israel after their wedding.

Three of the four other victims were members of a single family, the coroner’s office said. Ori Fogel, a friend of Feldman’s and president of the Israeli Flying Club, based in Van Nuys Airport, said the three were two brothers and a sister from the Amrani family of Agoura Hills.

“It’s an enormous tragedy,” said Moshe Benzioni, a spokesman for the Israeli consulate’s office in the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. The consulate’s office has requested dental and fingerprint records from Israel to help the coroner’s office confirm identifications of several of the victims.

The Cessna 310 departed from Van Nuys between 5 and 6 p.m. Saturday and headed for Las Ve gas, said Don Llorente, a supervisory air safety investigator. The plane and its six passengers left Las Vegas on Sunday and stopped in the Grand Canyon, he said. The group was apparently on its way back to Van Nuys when for an unknown reason Feldman or a passenger requested landing instructions from the Fox Field tower.

There was no mention during the communication that the plane was experiencing difficulties or that it was out of fuel, Llorente said.

An FAA spokesperson on Monday said the tower asked the plane’s pilot to recontact the tower when the plane was within two miles of the remote airfield. That second contact was never made because the plane crashed shortly thereafter.

Witnesses said the aircraft at first was losing altitude and then suddenly began spiraling rapidly toward the ground.

“The aircraft struck the ground in a near vertical (position),” Llorente said. The plane compressed in on itself on impact, throwing the bodies of five of the six victims as much as 50 feet from the crash site.

Witnesses said they heard the plane’s engines revving while it was spiraling toward the ground.

The plane’s owner, Konski, who believes that the accident was the result of the plane running out of fuel, said Feldman was an experienced pilot with about 450 hours of flying time and had previously rented the Cessna 310.

“He knew what he was doing,” agreed Fogel of the Israeli Flying Club.

Feldman was a founding member of that group of about 50 pilots formed in early 1991, Fogel said. The group meets weekly at its Van Nuys Airport lounge and members take flying trips together, he added.

Fogel said Feldman had no family locally and Mormi’s father had flown from Israel to New York, arriving there Monday, planning to come to Los Angeles for his daughter’s wedding. “This is a tragedy for the Israeli community,” he said.

NTSB investigators said Monday that they did not know how long it would take for them to determine the cause of the crash. It appeared that there was a loss of control in flight, Llorente said.

A preliminary review of the maintenance logs for the plane indicate that it was being properly maintained, he said.

Llorente said the possibility of the crash being caused by the plane running out of fuel will be the last possible reason he will consider, mainly so he does not overlook less obvious details.

Receipts found by investigators in the wreckage show that Feldman purchased 20 gallons of fuel for the aircraft in Las Vegas and added another 15.4 gallons at the Grand Canyon airport.

It was not immediately known how many gallons of fuel were in the plane’s two main tanks and two auxiliary tanks, which hold a total of 130 gallons, when it departed from Van Nuys Saturday. The trip from Van Nuys to Lancaster, via Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, would have covered a minimum of 670 nautical miles.

A preliminary investigation at the scene by NTSB officials Monday showed that none of the aircraft’s external components had detached from the aircraft before the crash.

The landing gear was down, the landing lights were extended and the instruments indicated that one of the engines was running at 2,700 r.p.m. and the other was at 2,900 r.p.m., Llorente said.

Sharon Moeser is a Times correspondent; John Chandler is a Times staff writer.