WATSONVILLE, Calif. – Two tiny planes crashed in Northern California Thursday while attempting to land at a rural airfield, killing at least two of the three occupants, officials said.
According to a tweet from the city of Watsonville, the planes crashed soon before 3 p.m. at Watsonville Municipal Airport. There is no control tower at the city-owned airport to direct aircraft landing and taking off.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there were two occupants aboard a twin-engine Cessna 340 and just the pilot aboard a single-engine Cessna 152 at the time of the disaster. Officials said many fatalities have been recorded, although it is unclear whether anyone survived.
The pilots were on their final approaches to the airport when they collided, according to the FAA. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the collision, but no other information was immediately available.
Nobody on the ground was hurt. According to its website, the airport has four runways and can accommodate more than 300 aircraft. It conducts about 55,000 operations per year and is frequently utilized for leisure flights and agricultural companies.
Watsonville, on Monterey Bay, is located around 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of San Francisco.
Social media photos and videos showed the wreckage of a tiny plane on a grassy area near the airport. A column of smoke was visible from a street near the airport in one photograph.
A city of Watsonville picture showed damage to a small facility at the airport, with firemen on the site.
According to a witness, the planes were around 200 feet (61 meters) in the air when they crashed.
Franky Herrera was driving by the airport when he seen the twin-engine jet bank hard to the right and collide with the wing of the smaller plane, which simply spiraled down and crashed at the airfield’s edge and not far from residences, he told the newspaper.
The twin-engine plane continued to fly, but it was struggling, Herrera added, before he noticed flames on the other side of the airport.
In the hours following the incident, the manager of the Watsonville Municipal Airport was unavailable for a phone interview. According to the City of Watsonville’s website, the airport contributes for over 40 of all general aviation activities in the Monterey Bay region.
The Watsonville Police Department sent callers to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, where a dispatcher was unable to provide information.
Two more pilots were injured in separate aircraft crashes in California on Thursday.
Authorities said a 65-year-old San Diego man suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries after his single-engine plane crashed on a roadway near a busy highway bridge in El Cajon.
The plane apparently collided with an SUV, but no one was injured on the ground in the city about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of downtown San Diego.
Later, an ultralight aircraft crashed upside down on a building at Camarillo Airport in Ventura County, roughly 60 miles (97 kilometers) from downtown Los Angeles. The pilot was badly injured.
Source: apnews
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