SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – An airplane pilot and co-pilot are no longer hospitalized after their single-engine airplane crashed shortly after takeoff from a small Bay Area airport on Wednesday morning.
A Nut Tree Airport official told KCBS Radio in a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon that the pilot and co-pilot returned to the Vacaville general aviation airport to retrieve their belongings after sustaining "very minor bumps and bruises" in a crash that morning.
"We feel really blessed," Nut Tree Airport Manager Jeff Crechriou told KCBS Radio on Wednesday.
Crechriou said a single-engine Cessna 150 sustained "major structural damage" after the pilot had to take the plane down for an emergency landing. He said the plane lost power no more than 300 feet in the air as it departed the airport, and the pilot did "a very nice job" of "picking a spot then executing an emergency landing."
"Your options for how you deal with where you're gonna put the plane down are very limited," Crechriou explained, noting that the plane lost power during a "pretty critical time frame" after taking off.
The Solano County Sheriff's Office responded to the airport at 11:20 a.m. and said that two people were transported to a nearby hospital.
The plane crashed six days after two planes collided in mid-air at Watsonville Municipal Airport, killing three people and a dog aboard the two aircraft. General aviation deaths are exceedingly rare, and the National Transportation Safety Board said that there were about 1.05 fatal accidents for every 100,000 flight hours logged in 2020.
Crechriou, who said he has worked at Nut Tree for only a few months, said multiple colleagues told him it had been about 40 years since an accident similar to Wednesday’s crash had occurred.
The Federal Aviation Administration told KCBS Radio that the federal agency is investigating Wednesday's crash and couldn't identify the people injured. The plane is registered to a Morgan Hill resident, according to the FAA's database, but it’s unclear if they were involved in the crash.
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