Small Plane from Santa Monica Airport Crashes in LA; Two Dead

By Lookout Staff

June 6 -- A small airplane that took off from the Santa Monica Airport Friday afternoon spun out of control and nose-dived into a Los Angeles apartment building Friday, engulfing it in flames and leaving two people dead and seven injured.

One body was found in the wreckage of the plane, which burrowed through two floors shortly before ending up in a parking garage on the ground floor, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. A resident of the building was found dead in a top floor unit under burning debris.

Three of the injured, including a man who sustained burns on a quarter of his body, were taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to fire officials.

The crash, which occurred shortly before 4 p.m., seemed to be an accident, fire officials said. The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation.

Federal Aviation Administration officials believe the four-seat aircraft took off from Santa Monica Airport about 10 miles away.

According to FAA spokesman Donn Walker, a single-engine Bonanza BE-36 took off from Santa Monica at 3:45 p.m. Seven minutes later the airport control tower gave the pilot a frequency change to contact the Southern California Terminal Radar Approach Control facility for flight guidance.

“They never contacted TRACON,” Walker said, according to press reports.

Walker said the pilot of the small aircraft was operating on visual flight rules.

Witnesses who saw the airplane crash into the 14-unit apartment building in the heavily Jewish Fairfax district described two explosions accompanied by black smoke.

It took firefighters about 30 minutes to control the blaze, which reportedly gutted half the building about a block from the athletic fields of Fairfax High School.