As federal authorities begin investigating Saturday morning’s deadly crash near Dillingham Airfield, those who knew the two men in the plane have started paying tribute to the pair, whom they call experienced pilots and important members of Hawaii’s aviation community.

Multiple sources confirmed the identities of 70-year-old Rick Rogers, a longtime Hawaiian Airlines employee, and 78-year-old Bill Enoka, who also had a lengthy aviation career.

Ann Botticelli, spokeswoman for Hawaiian Airlines, said Rogers began working with the company in 1987 as a pilot before retiring in 2010. Rogers then became a consultant archivist for the company.

“He had endless curiosity and an abundance of ideas about how to tell our company’s history. He curated our archives with care and loved to share what he knew,” Botticelli said in an email Saturday. “He was a passionate protector of history, an aviation enthusiast, an author, and a marine archaeologist. In short, he was a renaissance man and all of us were very lucky to have spent time with him.”

Rogers was “an excellent pilot,” said Juan Ariza, owner of AutoGyro Hawaii at Dillingham Airfield, on Saturday.

“He flew with many of my students and many other people that I worked with. He was an outstanding person,” Ariza said.

Ariza knew Rogers and said both were part of Hawaii’s small and close-knit aviation community.

Karen Oliveira-Spofford, who knew both aviators, left a bouquet of flowers near the crash site Sunday.

Oliveira-Spofford said she knew Enoka, who was a dear friend of her late father and well-known aviator Mel Souza, from small-kid times. She said both Enoka and Rogers also came to her assistance when she earned her private pilot’s license at about 20.

Oliveira-Spofford said Rogers taught her to do spins when she was a young pilot. She said Enoka once did a refresher flight for her when her dad brought her to Kauai.

“The aviation community in Hawaii is very tightknit. I wanted to honor them on behalf of my dad, who really cared about them, especially Bill Enoka, who was his dear friend,” Oliveira- Spofford said.

“Both of them were really good men. They were from a generation of real gentlemen, and they were incredible pilots. It was really tragic to lose them,” she said. “They really were legendary, salt of the earth, and just the finest gentlemen that you could imagine.”

Steve Lowry, of Acroflight International based out of Dillingham Airfield, is a pilot who knew Enoka for nearly 20 years and Rogers for almost 10. He said, “It was a privilege to have known both of them.”

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and officials from the Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday morning were at the scene of the fatal crash.

NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said investigators will be looking into conditions ranging from “human, machine and environment, including weather, geology and other aspects.”

Weiss said the FAA is a party to the NTSB investigation.

“They will assist us in gathering facts, but we’ll do the analysis and finding of probable cause,” he said.

Weiss said NTSB generally takes about two weeks to issue a report with preliminary findings and could take up to a year or two to release its final report.

The single-engine Cessna Ector 305A, a glider tow plane, crashed about 200 yards from Dillingham Airfield, the site of a June skydiving crash that killed all 11 on board. The circa-1979 plane, which was owned by the Honolulu Soaring Club, crashed under unknown circumstances soon after taking off at about 9:15 a.m. and landed in tall grass.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Saturday that the plane came to rest upside down.

There was no glider involved in the crash.

The future of Dillingham Airfield, which was in doubt before the crash, remains uncertain.

The state Department of Transportation, which operates the airfield under a lease with the Army, last month informed the Army that it intends to cut short the lease and transfer the airfield back to Army control July 1.

Several businesses that operate at the airfield, including skydiving and glider companies, fear that returning the airfield to Army control would bring an end to commercial operations there.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz issued a statement Saturday calling for the closure of Dillingham Airfield.

“It has become clear that Dillingham Airfield cannot continue to operate safely,” he said in a statement. “Our obligation is to keep people safe, and the only way to do that is to keep the airfield closed. I urge the FAA and HDOT to shut down the airfield until they can guarantee safety of operations at Dillingham.”

But state Sen. Gil Riviere (D, Heeia-Laie-Waialua) on Saturday called Schatz’s statement on closing the airfield “irresponsible” and said the two pilots who died were “highly qualified aviators, devoted to the love of flight.”

DOT spokesman Tim Sakahara said Sunday that Dillingham Airfield is still closed pending the investigation, but there haven’t been any discussions about changing the timetable for the state to exit its lease.

“This incident didn’t impact anything that the state is doing to transfer the lease back by June 30,” he said.