Upside-Down Landing in Canoga Park : Pilot Crashes in Alley, Walks Away

A disabled small airplane making an emergency landing swooped into power poles in a Canoga Park residential neighborhood Tuesday afternoon and flipped over, crashing upside down in an alley.

But the pilot, who said he was trying to avoid children playing in a schoolyard, walked away from the crash, apparently without injury.

The pilot, Richard E. Cabrinha, 51, of Huntington Beach, said he had taken off from Camarillo Airport, heading for Meadowlark Airport in Orange County, and was passing over the Simi Hills when the oil pressure suddenly dropped, the engine began to vibrate severely and “there was smoke all around the cockpit.”

The engine of the Piper Comanche 250 stopped and he prepared for a powerless landing, Cabrinha said.

“All I could think about was not hitting anybody.”

As the plane glided toward western Canoga Park, Cabrinha sighted a field, then saw that it appeared to be next to a school and that children were playing in it, he said. He swung away, hoping to set the plane down on Vanowen Street.

Three schools are within a mile of the crash scene.

Cabrinha said he lost altitude too quickly to land on Vanowen, so he pointed the plane toward an alley running east from Woodlake Avenue between Vanowen and Welby Way. “I put my wheels down and went for the alley,” he said, but the undercarriage snagged on utility poles, flipping the plane onto its back as it crashed in the alley at 4:40 p.m.

A Department of Water and Power spokesman said the landing gear apparently struck two power poles, shearing off the tops and blacking out about two blocks near the crash scene.

Wing Atop Fence

The plane’s wingspan was wider than the 20-foot alley and the craft came to rest diagonally, one wing atop a backyard fence. Cabrinha said he turned off the electrical switches to reduce the chance of a fire and crawled from the cockpit, which was crumpled against the pavement.

The pilot “just walked out the door,” said Bob Johnson, who was working on a motorcycle in the alley, along with a friend, when the aircraft crashed about two houses short of them.

“He just walked by us. He didn’t talk to us or anything. He was more worried about his briefcase than anything,” Johnson said.

Cabrinha was taken for observation to Humana Hospital West Hills in Canoga Park, where he told administrators that he was not injured and was released.

Cabrinha said that, despite the accident, he would continue to fly. He said he works on the technical staff of DEL Manufacturing Co., an Oxnard firm that manufactures rockets and bombs, and flies to the Oxnard area about once a week. He said he owned the plane.