US: One Killed when in Los Angeles Hillside Plane Crash

One person was killed when a single-engine plane slammed into a grassy hillside above homes in a Los Angeles neighbourhood amid dense fog, authorities said.

The Cessna C172 crashed around 8:45 pm on Saturday in a neighbourhood on the city’s west side, about 13 km southeast of Van Nuys Airport, the Los Angeles Fire Department and Federal Aviation Administration said.

Joubin Solemani was at home with his family in the Beverly Crest neighbourhood when they all heard a loud crash.

“We thought it might be a car crash, but we looked outside and didn’t see anything. We didn’t know what the heck it was,” Solemani said on Sunday. “Then search-and-rescue showed up and were all over the hillside.” After searching for several hours in darkness and ”thick ground-level fog,” crews found the crash site and one person dead in the wreckage, the fire department said in a statement. The pilot was the plane’s lone occupant, the FAA said.

When the sun came up on Sunday, Solemani said he could see the plane a few hundred feet above his property in the Santa Monica Mountains. “It’s totally mangled,” he said.

The plane avoided hitting power lines and a large water tank and, officials said, there was minimal fire.

An air traffic controller initially reported the plane as missing after losing radar contact with the aircraft while it was en route to Van Nuys Airport, the fire department said in an alert shortly after 8 pm on Saturday.

The flight originated at Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport in Thermal, California, near Palm Springs, according to the aircraft tracking website FlightAware.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.

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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)