Plane With 4 Aboard Crashes Into the Ocean : Accident: The bodies of two boys are recovered; their grandmother, her husband are missing. The craft had nearly collided with a commuter airliner.

SANTA BARBARA —  Coast Guard searchers recovered two bodies and hunted for two more Saturday amid the wreckage of a plane that plunged into the ocean off Santa Barbara after nearly colliding with a SkyWest commuter airliner.

Eyewitnesses said they saw an aircraft drop into the water sometime after 11:15 p.m. Friday and explode about a mile from the Goleta Pier, said Tim Gracey, a spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.

The aircraft was en route to Santa Barbara from the Santa Monica airport when the crash occurred. Those aboard were identified as 7- and 10-year-old brothers, Matthew and Samuel Hacker; their grandmother, Joan (Cookie) Jones, 66, and her husband, Dennis Jones, 47. They were returning from a vacation in Hawaii.

A Coast Guard helicopter with a powerful spotlight hovered above the ocean between the Goleta Pier and Arroyo Burro Beach after the crash, but no survivors were seen, Gracey said.

The bodies of the two boys were found shortly after 6 a.m., about half a mile off the coast near the Mesa lighthouse. They are the sons of Peter and Sarah Hacker of the San Francisco area, said an aunt, Jophe Jones.

Authorities said that Dennis Jones, a Los Angeles-area developer, is believed to have been the pilot of the twin-engine Mitsubishi turboprop. Jophe Jones said her father had called her from the aircraft 10 minutes before the crash to notify her that they would be arriving.

“I just don’t understand what went wrong,” she said. “He was a very fine pilot.”

Elly Brekke, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Los Angeles, said the pilot of the Mitsubishi plane was flying visually instead of with radar. She said the plane had been flying close behind the SkyWest aircraft. SkyWest officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.

The Mitsubishi was last heard from at about 11:10 p.m., when the pilot radioed the tower to say he was approaching the airport, Brekke said. A group of grunion hunters, who saw the plane go down, reported the crash to authorities.

Officials are trying to determine if the clouds and fog that shrouded the area Friday night played a role in the crash, Brekke said.

“Right now we just don’t know,” she said. “The safety board will make that determination.”

Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were on the scene.