{"id":18663,"date":"2025-10-22T23:59:50","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T23:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/18663\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T23:59:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T23:59:50","slug":"pilot-who-crash-landed-in-long-beachs-heartwell-park-told-tower-he-lost-power-press-enterprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/18663\/","title":{"rendered":"Pilot who crash-landed in Long Beach\u2019s Heartwell Park told tower he lost power \u2013 Press Enterprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

A pilot who crash-landed a two-seater airplane on Tuesday, Oct. 21, in Long Beach\u2019s Heartwell Park<\/a>, injuring a woman on the ground, had radioed to the Long Beach Airport tower that he had lost power three miles east of the airfield and declared an emergency, according to air traffic control audio obtained by the Southern California News Group.<\/p>\n

A tower air traffic controller asked the pilot which runway he wanted to try to land on, but the pilot\u2019s initial response was unclear.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to make it,\u201d the pilot said. \u201cI\u2019m going to pick a field here and land this deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minutes later, the tower communicator asked another pilot in the area if he or she had eyes on the aircraft and whether it landed on a nearby golf course.<\/p>\n

But that pilot said he did not see the aircraft on the ground.<\/p>\n

The crash occurred about 4 p.m. with the aircraft \u2014 a 1986 Lazzarini Long-EZ fixed-wing, single-engine plane \u2014 landing on its belly on one of the soccer fields in the park in the 6300 block of Carson Street, according to a Federal Aviation Administration registry and Long Beach Fire Department officials, who responded to the crash.<\/p>\n

The plane suffered broken landing gears with the fuselage intact, fire officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnits assisted with removing the pilot, an elderly male, from the airplane,\u201d they said on Instagram.<\/p>\n

The pilot and the pedestrian, a woman in her 40s, were taken to a hospital with moderate injuries.<\/p>\n

Information from FlightAware, a website that tracks flights, shows the plane had traveled from Compton-Woodley Airport to French Valley Airport in Murrieta earlier in the day and was flying from there to Long Beach when the pilot experienced the loss of power.<\/p>\n

The pilot told firefighters his plan was to return to Compton-Woodley Airport, said Capt. Jack Crabtree of the Long Beach Fire Department.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Sebastian Gallegos told OnScene TV, a freelance news organization that sometimes works with the Southern California News Group, that he saw the crash, that the woman who was hit is a friend and that she was struck in the back by the plane\u2019s propeller as she walked her dog in the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt banked left and it went way too over and then that\u2019s when it flipped over,\u201d Gallegos said. \u201cI saw it come down, it hit the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn\u2019t have time at all (to react),\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

Gallegos said he ran over after the crash. He grabbed the dog and was planning on taking it to a veterinarian to be evaluated.<\/p>\n

An update on the conditions of the pilot and the woman were not available Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: October 22, 2025 at 1:31 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pilot who crash-landed a two-seater airplane on Tuesday, Oct. 21, in Long Beach\u2019s Heartwell Park, injuring a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,723,138,131,133,132,137,100,1492,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-18663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-crime","10":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-los-angeles-county","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-public-safety","17":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}