Aviation officials are investigating a plane crash that occurred in Westwood about two miles from UCLA on Friday evening, killing the pilot.
A little after 6 p.m., the plane ““ a single-engine Cessna 210 ““ crashed on the corner of Glendon and Mississippi avenues, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman at the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The plane had departed from the Santa Monica Municipal Airport around 5:45 p.m. on Friday, but began returning to the airport after the pilot reported an emergency, said Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is the agency investigating the crash. The pilot did not specify the problem, but was attempting a forced landing when the crash occurred, Knudson said.
The crash caused a fire that was extinguished within five minutes, Humphrey said. Smoke from the fire could be seen from the UCLA campus.
The pilot, who was the only person on board the plane, was declared dead at the scene. Humphrey said there were no obvious signs of another person at the crash site or in the surrounding area when LAFD investigated Friday shortly after the crash. No other injuries were reported, and no other people have been reported missing.
The plane landed near a home at 2111 South Glendon Ave., a few miles from the airport. Only a palm tree was hit ““ there was no structural damage to nearby homes, Humphrey said.
The plane is registered to a Santa Monica resident.
One of the first onlookers at the scene was Peter Utas, an emergency room physician and UCLA alumnus who lives near the intersection where the crash occurred. He said he went to see what happened after hearing a loud boom.
“(It was) the kind of noise where you think, “˜Well, that’s not right,'” he said.
Utas showed up to the site with his son within a minute of the crash, he said. He saw the plane’s engine in the intersection of Glendon and Mississippi avenues, he said.
Other passersby also gathered around the site following the crash, and watched from across the blocked-off streets.
Joan Daniels, a Westwood resident who lives less than a block from where the crash occurred, said she heard a boom, like the sound Utas described, around 6 p.m. and came out of her house.
“I looked up and saw this huge ball of smoke as high as you can see,” she said.
While watching the investigation at the scene, Daniels said she always hated the “big, thick and ugly” palm tree that the plane struck, but realized it saved the corner house from getting hit in the crash.
Traffic through the intersection was blocked for hours following the crash, as investigators assessed the scene and then moved the plane to another location to continue their investigation.
The National Transportation Safety Board will release a preliminary report on its investigation within the next two weeks. A full investigation into the cause of the crash will take about a year, Knudson said.
Contributing reports by Jillian Beck and Alessandra Daskalakis, Bruin senior staff.