The pilot of a small propeller plane faced with engine issues or other problems mid-flight is usually trained in identifying the best spot for an emergency landing if they are forced to choose: A wide open field. An empty beach. A freeway.<\/p>\n
But in highly urbanized areas like the Bay Area\u2019s cities, the options can be limited in the regions surrounding small airports, pilots said. Two planes crashed in San Jose last week, with one coming down over busy Capitol Expressway and clipping a new BART project under construction<\/a>, a vertical obstacle that one expert said could complicate what used to be a reliable rough-landing location.<\/p>\n With general-aviation airports spread across the Bay Area \u2014 San Jose, Livermore, Concord, Hayward and Palo Alto, to name a few \u2014 there are plenty of pilots in small aircraft flying overhead at any time. On Friday, a plane crash-landed at Reid-Hillview Airport<\/a> due to faulty landing gear. The Saturday crash-landing injured\u00a0three passengers in a crash witnessed by a roadway full of drivers.<\/p>\n Having two Bay Area incidents in a 24-hour span \u201cis pretty unusual, but the statistics show that, with the random distribution, you\u2019re going to get that occurring from time to time,\u201d said Steve Philipson, an independent Palo Alto flight instructor who has been teaching for 36 years and flying for 43. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole lot more (collisions while) driving. \u2026 People tend to take notice of airplane crashes because they\u2019re relatively rare.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024, there were 1,201 accidents in U.S. civil aviation as tracked by the National Transportation Safety Board, seven of which were in the Bay Area. Of those, 188 resulted in fatalities, with 321 people dying nationwide.<\/p>\n The Saturday collision, which occurred around 3:10 p.m., came after the Cessna\u2019s pilot reported having engine trouble, according to preliminary information provided by the Federal Aviation Administration. The passengers\u2019 injuries were all categorized as minor, and the plane suffered an unspecified level of damage, according to the FAA\u2019s accident and incident notification.<\/p>\n The incident remains under investigation by the FAA and the NTSB, authorities said. A preliminary report will be available within 30 days, said Sarah Taylor Sulick, public affairs specialist for the NTSB.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Most plane incidents of this type are \u201cpretty small,\u201d Philipson said, \u201clike somebody lands off field due to a failure or they make a poor landing at an airport.\u201d The majority of crashes are caused by pilot error, such as undershooting or overshooting the runway while landing, but those are typically less serious accidents.<\/p>\n \u201cThose are typically severely bruising to one\u2019s ego and damaging to the airplane but not fatal,\u201d Philipson said.<\/p>\n Other mechanical issues \u2014 such as the failure of a part of the aircraft or an issue with maintenance \u2014 are \u201crelatively in the minority,\u201d he added. But there are \u201ca whole lot of systems that make an airplane work\u201d and \u201cany number of them could be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n Pilots are trained to be able to glide their aircraft into a forced landing, even if they do not have engine power, said Andrew Dilworth, a Palo Alto-based flight instructor who has been flying for 25 years and teaching for 23 years. To do that successfully, the plane must have enough altitude.<\/p>\n \u201cAll these airplanes are capable of gliding into a forced landing,\u201d Dilworth said. \u201cEverybody thinks that if the engine dies the plane comes tumbling out of the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n In making their quick decisions, pilots have to weigh several factors: preserving life of both those in the plane and those on the ground and attempting to land the airplane without crashing, Dilworth added.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing that I have always taught my students is that we should not endanger people who have not elected to take the risk of flying to the maximum extent possible,\u201d Philipson added.<\/p>\n That\u2019s where the challenge lies in densely populated areas like San Jose: finding an appropriate place to conduct an emergency landing.<\/p>\n Sometimes, \u201cit\u2019s either someone\u2019s living room or the street,\u201d Dilworth said.<\/p>\n The wide space of Capitol Expressway \u2014 where the Cessna landed on Saturday \u2014 was previously a good place<\/a> to carry out emergency landings<\/a> while facing an engine problem near Reid-Hillview, Philipson said.<\/p>\n But the recent construction of an elevated structure as part of the Valley Transportation Authority\u2019s Eastridge to BART Regional Connector Project\u00a0has made that more difficult, Philipson said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat airport is city-locked, so it becomes very difficult for pilots if they have a problem and can\u2019t make the airport,\u201d Philipson said. \u201cAny road is potentially a surrogate emergency runway, but if it\u2019s covered by a tall structure, that makes it more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Decisions regarding land use in the areas around airports are determined by local governments, but under federal law developers are required to \u201cgive the FAA the opportunity to evaluate proposed structures near airports to determine whether they could pose a hazard to aircraft or interfere with navigation aids,\u201d said an FAA spokesperson. That evaluation includes looking at the surface material and height of proposed structures.<\/p>\n The Eastridge to BART Regional Connector Project extends the light rail service and includes elevated guardrails in the middle of Capitol Expressway, an elevated station at Story Road and a ground-level station at the Eastridge Transit Center, said Stacey Hendler Ross, VTA\u2019s public information officer. The section of the project that the plane clipped was a bridge located on the north end of the project near the Alum Rock Station.<\/p>\n Hendler Ross added that the FAA was consulted during the project\u2019s planning and the \u201cFAA performed a thorough evaluation for safety and approved the project alignment and raised structure.\u201d<\/p>\n Santa Clara County, which owns Reid-Hillview Airport, did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n In the vicinity of Reid-Hillview Airport, Dilworth could think of only two potential emergency landing sites aside from Capitol Expressway, given that the area is surrounded by buildings and residences: an abandoned golf course or in the water of Lake Cunningham.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery pilot dreads this,\u201d Dilworth added, \u201cbut every pilot trains for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pilot of a small propeller plane faced with engine issues or other problems mid-flight is usually trained…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[194975,31421,15104,193623,88,90,89,194974,194976],"class_list":["post-504163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bay-area-aviation","tag-capitol-expressway","tag-emergency-landing","tag-reid-hillview-airport","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-plane-crash","tag-small-plane-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504163","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=504163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}