14 DAY TRIAL // One person has died after a mid-air collision between two small planes over Southern California on Monday, April 29.
According to Fox News, one of the two small, single-engine planes landed in Calabasas while the other in Westlake Village.
The 2 p.m. Calabasas incident was initially reported as a brush fire. As firefighters worked to put out the blaze, they noticed the aircraft, My Fox LA describes.
According to Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore, a single body was found on board the second Cessna 172. Investigators believe that the pilot has died in the crash, having been alone on board the aircraft.
The Westlake Village landing was smoother, with the Cessna 172 touching ground on a golf course at 2:15 p.m.
According to a golfer on site, it hit a tree, turned 180 degrees but was able to recover for landing.
“Finally being a bad golfer paid off. [...] I hit it in the trees to the right. They landed 50 feet (15 meters) 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, veering to the left,” a man identifying himself as Jesse recalls for LA Times.
The three people on the plane have incurred minor, non-life-threatening injuries and have been checked out at a local hospital.
FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer announced yesterday that they were “working two possible airplane accidents,” not knowing if there was a connection between the crashes at first.
The “two Cessna's merged” at 3100 feet (945 meters), but the cause of the crash is not known at this point. The airplanes collided sometime around 2 p.m. and were catapulted to different areas.