Skip to footer

Plane crashes near L.A. after mid-air collision

Plane crashes near L.A. after two planes collided mid-air Monday. One small plane landed on a golf course, and all three passengers are safe. The other small plane crashed, with one fatality.

|
(AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Ricardo DeAratanha)
A single-engine Cessna made an emergency landing at Westlake Village Golf Course Monday, April 29, 2013. Three people received minor injuries.
  • By Staff Associated Press

| Westlake Village, Calif.

Two small airplanes with a combined four people aboard collided in midair over the Southern California mountains, sending one crashing into a rocky ridge and killing its pilot while the second was able to maneuver a belly-flop landing on the fairway of a nearby golf course, officials said.

Rescuers searched through the wreckage of the plane that crashed and sparked a fire in rocky terrain in Calabasas on Monday and found a body that was believed to be the only person aboard, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

Firefighters responding to a report of a small wildfire at about 2 p.m. spotted the aircraft debris, put out the fire and began a search for survivors, county fire Inspector Quvondo Johnson said. The plane had taken off from Santa Monica Airport in order to test its engine.

Three people on the plane that landed on a fairway while stunned golfers looked on had minor injuries. One was hospitalized after complaining of back pain.

Aaron Jesse, 47, said he had left work early for a round with friends at Westlake Golf Course and saw the low-flying plane hit a tree, spin around 180 degrees and land surprisingly gently.

"Finally being a bad golfer paid off," Jesse told the Los Angeles Times. "I hit it in the trees to the right. They landed 50 feet to the left of us in the center of the fairway. All we heard was a thud and then he made a gentle bounce and slid down the center of the fairway."

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said a preliminary review of radar records showed the two flight-paths crossed just after 2 p.m.

The golf-course plane, a single-engine Cessna 172RG, was flying west at an altitude of 3,500 feet when the second plane, also a Cessna, approached from the east after leaving Santa Monica Airport.

The National Transportation Safety Board and FAA are investigating.

FAA records show the plane on the golf course was manufactured in 1980 and is registered to Ameriflyers of Florida, LLC. A message left at a number listed for the company was not immediately returned.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Plane crashes near L.A. after mid-air collision
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0430/Plane-crashes-near-L.A.-after-mid-air-collision
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe