L.A. plane collision: Two small planes collided in midair in near Los Angeles, killing one person and triggered an investigation from National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday.
After the incident, one of the planes was sent into the Santa Monica Mountains, which caused the death, reported the Los Angeles Times.
The other aircraft had three people on board. It made an emergency landing at the Westlake Golf Course. Those on board suffered only minor injuries.
Both aircraft were Cessna single-engine planes.
“My wife and I ... were hiking along Craig Road in the Malibu Creek State Park. It happened almost overhead of us,” Tim Willims, who was hiking in Calabasas on Monday, wrote to Patch.com.
He added: “We already knew it was a plane crash as we saw a plane go down after hearing a very loud ‘explosion’ type sound.”
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.”
Firefighters told SCPR that the plane wreckage caused a small fire that was extinguished quickly.
“It was in a very remote area, so we had some challenges getting to that brush fire. We had our helicopters that were making water drops, and they were the first to report that it might be possible debris on the hillside. We did have crews that hiked up there. And once they got there, they did make a determination that there was debris from a plane,” Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Quvondo Johnson told the station.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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