SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Federal officials say three people and a dog are dead after two planes crashed in mid-air at a small Northern California airport on Thursday.
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"We are grieving tonight from this unexpected and sudden loss," Watsonville Mayor Ari Parker said on Thursday night. "I want to express my deepest and most heartfelt condolences."
National Transportation Safety Board investigators said at a press conference on Friday that one plane was coming into the Watsonville Municipal Airport to land on Thursday afternoon, while another was "operating in the traffic pattern."
Federal officials said nobody on the ground was injured. Brenda Large, who works across the street from the airport, told KCBS Radio on Friday that a friend of hers who witnessed the crash told her that it appeared the twin-engine plane "just went right through" the single-engine plane involved in the crash.
Watsonville Municipal Airport doesn't have an an air traffic controller, thus leaving pilots to communicate with one another. It's unclear whether the pilots involved in Thursday's crash communicated with one another before the crash.
The Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB are investigating the accident, and officials said it could be "weeks" before they know about the planes' communication ahead of the crash.
Fabian Salazar, an air safety investigator with the latter agency, said Friday that officials are still conducting interviews, and the next step is to transport the aircraft to a secure facility for further examination.
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