A small plane nosedived into the middle of a busy San Jose intersection on Saturday afternoon, narrowly missing cars and homes.
The aircraft, a 1968 Cessna 177A Cardinal, went down just after 3 p.m. at Capitol Expressway and Excalibur Drive. The pilot reported engine trouble minutes after taking off from nearby Reid-Hillview Airport, and the flight began with a mayday call before the plane came down nose-first in the roadway.
Two adults and a child were on board. All three suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were taken to the hospital as a precaution, out of an abundance of caution. No one on the ground was hurt, and no vehicles were struck.
"It's a close call, it's a close call." — Ricardo Barlaan, witness
The plane ended up nose-down and tail-up in the middle of the road, its nose crushed against the pavement, causing a minor fuel spill that firefighters quickly absorbed and temporary traffic disruptions, including the brief closure of the Alum Rock Avenue off-ramp from Highway 680. It took crews about three hours to clear the wreckage, which was carried away on a flatbed truck with a police escort.
Neighbors watched it happen yards from their homes. Andrew Vasquez said he heard the impact and at first thought "it was some kind of stunt or they were making a movie or something." Joe Lopez, who has lived in the neighborhood for 60 years, said he had seen incidents involving aircraft from Reid-Hillview before but never one this close to his house. "It's a good thing the navigator landed where he did," Lopez said.
The aircraft is registered to Flying Twenty Inc., a nonprofit flight club for San Jose State University students, alumni and faculty that operates out of Reid-Hillview Airport. A club member reached by phone declined to comment on the club, the pilot or the circumstances of the crash. San Jose police said drugs and alcohol did not appear to be factors.
Saturday's crash was the latest in a series of off-airport accidents tied to East San Jose's airport over the decades — a Piper made an emergency street landing in 2002 after running out of fuel, a Cessna crashed into a garage in 2017, and a gyrocopter came down near Eastridge Mall on June 29 — and it came just one day after another small plane crash-landed at Reid-Hillview on Friday night with faulty landing gear; the two people aboard that plane were uninjured. The FAA is investigating the cause of Saturday's crash.
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