Plane Crashes on Driveway Near Whiteman

A small airplane lost power near Whiteman Airport in Pacoima Thursday morning and crash-landed on a narrow driveway between two houses.

No one was injured and one house was slightly damaged.

“It was just blind luck that I didn’t hit anything,” said pilot Gerald D. Anderton, 36, of Sandy, Utah, who walked away from the crash with a small scratch on his left hand. “Somebody upstairs was watching me.”

Six children preparing for school and two women were inside the house, in the 12600 block of Wingo Street, that was damaged by the plane.

“I thought it was an earthquake, the house shook and there was such a loud boom,” said Exaltacion Bartado, 22. “But then the earth didn’t move. It was quiet.”

The children began screaming and crying, Bartado said. She said she opened her back kitchen door and saw the plane. “I told the children, ‘Run from the house, run from the house.’ ”

“It was so frightening, my legs cannot stop shaking,” said Maximilla Mundo, 60, Bartado’s mother. “I thank God that nothing happened.”

The damage to the house: a bent window awning and scrapes on a side wall.

Anderton said he was headed south approaching Burbank Airport shortly before 8 a.m. when the single engine of his Beechcraft Bonanza failed. He said he radioed Burbank air-traffic controllers, who told him he could attempt landing at nearby Whiteman Airport.

Not Enough Power

“All I could do was float and try to maneuver the plane and avoid the power lines,” said Anderton, who has been flying for 10 years. “I saw the runway” at Whiteman, “but knew I didn’t have enough power to get there.”

On its way down, the plane clipped a garage roof and a tree and spun around, Anderton said. It crashed on a driveway, nicking the Wingo Street house. The crash site was about a quarter-mile short of the airport runway.

The plane’s wings were sheared off and left crumpled between the two houses. The engine, in the nose of the plane, was crushed, but the fuselage was intact.

“I was afraid the plane was going to catch fire and blow,” Anderton said.

Employees from Whiteman Airport had spotted the troubled plane on its way down, called firefighters and rushed to the scene, said John Lounsbery, Whiteman Airport manager. Anderton said he was pulling himself out of the wreckage as Los Angeles city fire engines pulled up. But there was no fire after the crash, officials said.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration inspected the crash site and interviewed Anderton. It will be several months before the cause of the crash is officially determined, said Gary Mucho, Western regional director for the NTSB.

Anderton, who works for an insurance company, said he was flying to Burbank Airport from his Utah home to attend a business meeting. He had stopped at Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport for refueling.

Wayne Pollack, an air-safety investigator with the NTSB, said Anderton reported switching fuel tanks near Palmdale and again on approach to Burbank Airport. The plane’s fuel tanks are inside its wings.

“A total loss of all engine power” occurred after Anderton switched to the second tank, Pollack said. The plane was about 2,500 feet above ground at the time, Pollack said.

A preliminary inspection showed there was ample fuel in both tanks, Pollack said.

The pieces of the plane were removed by NTSB officials Thursday afternoon and taken to an aircraft salvage yard in Long Beach, Pollack said.