A small plane carrying three people nosedived into traffic on one of San Jose’s busiest streets Saturday afternoon, leaving everyone aboard and on the ground with only non-life-threatening injuries.<\/p>\n
The crash occurred just before 3:10 p.m. at the intersection of Capitol Expressway and Excalibur Drive, blocking traffic, causing a minor fuel spill that crews quickly absorbed, and forced the Alum Rock Avenue off-ramp from Highway 680 to briefly shut down.<\/p>\n
Emergency responders from the San Jose Fire Department confirmed that two adults and a child were inside the aircraft \u2014 identified by Federal Aviation Administration records as a 1968 Cessna 177A Cardinal — when it went down, ending up nose-down and tail-up in the middle of the road.<\/p>\n
The three occupants were transported to a hospital out of an abundance of caution. No vehicles or individuals on the ground were struck or injured.<\/p>\n
Witnesses in the neighborhood expressed shock at finding a plane crash-landed just yards away from their homes.<\/p>\n
“It’s a close call, it’s a close call,” said Ricardo Barlaan of San Jose.<\/p>\n
Andrew Vasquez, another witness, recalled hearing the impact. Describing the moment, he made a crashing sound and said, “Boom.”<\/p>\n
“It’s crazy, I’m flabbergasted,” Vasquez said. “At first I thought it was some kind of stunt or they were making a movie or something.”<\/p>\n
Joe Lopez, who has lived in the neighborhood for 60 years, noted that while there have been past incidents involving aircraft flying out of nearby Reid-Hillview Airport, he had never seen a plane come down this close to his house.<\/p>\n
“It’s a good thing the navigator landed where he did,” Lopez said.<\/p>\n
The plane’s tail number indicates it is registered to Flying Twenty Inc., a nonprofit flight club for San Jose State University students, alumni, and faculty. <\/p>\n
According to the club’s website, they operate out of Reid-Hillview Airport. A club member reached by phone declined to comment about the organization, the pilot or what happened.<\/p>\n
It took about three hours before the wreckage was cleared from the intersection, carried away on a flatbed truck with a police escort \u2014 leaving a crumpled reminder of a crash that started with a mayday and ended with what emergency personnel called a miraculous survival story.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s incident highlights ongoing local safety concerns, marking the latest in a series of off-airport aircraft accidents tied to facilities in East San Jose. According to National Transportation Safety Board records and published news reports, several similar off-airport crashes have occurred over the decades:<\/p>\n
Feb. 24, 2002: A Piper PA-24-250 lost engine power due to fuel exhaustion while approaching Reid-Hillview Airport, forcing the pilot to make an emergency street landing about two miles away where it collided with a car. The NTSB attributed the crash to inadequate flight planning and improper fuel-consumption calculations. No injuries were reported.<\/p>\n
Nov. 19, 2017: CBS reported that a Cessna 172P suffered a partial engine power loss after taking off from Reid-Hillview Airport, crashing into a garage on Evelyn Avenue roughly 300 yards northwest of the property. While no one inside the residence was hurt, the pilot sustained minor injuries and two passengers suffered serious injuries.<\/p>\n
June 29: A small experimental gyrocopter with two people on board crashed just outside Reid-Hillview Airport near Eastridge Mall. One occupant was hospitalized with moderate injuries, while the other was evaluated at the scene for minor injuries, according to a report from Newsbreak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A small plane carrying three people nosedived into traffic on one of San Jose’s busiest streets Saturday afternoon,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-500492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500492","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=500492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}