This photograph offered by KION-TV reveals a number of companies responding to Watsonville Municipal Airport, in Santa Cruz County, Calif. after 2 planes trying to land collided on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022.
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AP
This photograph offered by KION-TV reveals a number of companies responding to Watsonville Municipal Airport, in Santa Cruz County, Calif. after 2 planes trying to land collided on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022.
AP
WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Two small planes collided in Northern California whereas attempting to land at an area airport Thursday and no less than two of the three occupants had been killed, officers mentioned.
The planes crashed at Watsonville Municipal Airport shortly earlier than 3 p.m., in response to a tweet from the town of Watsonville. Town-owned airport doesn’t have a management tower to direct plane touchdown and taking off.
There have been two folks aboard a twin-engine Cessna 340 and solely the pilot aboard a single-engine Cessna 152 through the crash, in response to the Federal Aviation Administration. Officers say a number of fatalities had been reported but it surely was not instantly clear whether or not anybody survived.
The pilots had been on their last approaches to the airport earlier than the collision, the FAA mentioned in an announcement. The FAA and the Nationwide Transportation Security Board, which didn’t instantly have extra particulars, are investigating the crash.
Nobody on the bottom was injured. The airport has 4 runways and is residence to greater than 300 plane, in response to its web site. It handles greater than 55,000 operations a yr and is used usually for leisure planes and agriculture companies.
Watsonville, close to the Monterey Bay, is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of San Francisco.
Pictures and movies posted on social media confirmed the wreckage of 1 small airplane in a grassy subject by the airport. One image confirmed a plume of smoke seen from a avenue close to the airport.
A photograph from the town of Watsonville confirmed harm to a small constructing on the airport, with firefighters on the scene.
The planes had been about 200 ft (61 meters) within the air once they crashed, a witness informed the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Franky Herrera was driving previous the airport when he noticed the twin-engine airplane financial institution arduous to the suitable and hit the wing of the smaller plane, which “simply spiraled down and crashed” close to the sting of the airfield and never removed from houses, he informed the newspaper.
The dual-engine plane stored flying however “it was struggling,” Herrera mentioned, after which he noticed flames on the different aspect of the airport.
The supervisor of the Watsonville Municipal Airport was unavailable for a cellphone interview within the hours after the crash. The airport accounts for about 40% of all basic aviation actions within the Monterey Bay space, in response to the Metropolis of Watsonville’s web site.
The Watsonville Police Division referred calls to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Workplace, the place a dispatcher had no info.
Two different pilots additionally had been harm in plane crashes elsewhere in California on Thursday.
A 65-year-old San Diego man acquired accidents that had been main however not life-threatening when his single-engine airplane crashed on a avenue close to a busy freeway overpass in El Cajon, authorities mentioned.
The airplane reportedly struck an SUV however no one on the bottom was harm within the metropolis practically 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of downtown San Diego.
Later, the pilot of an ultralight plane was critically injured when it crashed the wrong way up on a constructing on the Camarillo Airport in Ventura County, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) from downtown Los Angeles.
