Pilot Loses Control, Crashes at Torrance Airport

A pilot was injured Thursday after he lost control of his small airplane while attempting an emergency landing at Torrance Municipal Airport and crashed into two parked cars.

It was the second plane this week to crash only moments after taking off from the airport.

The single-engine Piper 28-180 became embedded in one of the two cars and burst into flames, but the 55-year-old pilot, identified as Walter Talbert, was able to jump from the wreckage.

There were no passengers aboard the four-seat aircraft and the vehicles were unoccupied. The aircraft and one of the cars, a late-model Cadillac, were destroyed. The other car, a Rolls-Royce, was badly damaged.

After being treated by paramedics, the pilot was taken to Torrance Memorial Hospital Medical Center. A hospital spokeswoman said he was in serious but stable condition with second-degree burns and scrapes.

Debra Eckrote, an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the pilot took off from the airport’s northernmost runway about 2:30 p.m. Several minutes later, Eckrote said, he radioed the tower and said that he was losing air speed.

The pilot attempted to circle back and land at the airport but lost control of the aircraft before reaching a runway, she said. The plane came to a rest about 150 yards from one of the airport’s two runways.

Torrance firefighters quickly extinguished the fire.

The damaged cars are both owned by George Derenia, a Palos Verdes Estates resident and owner of Nova Construction Co. Derenia left the vehicles at the airport on Thursday morning to fly his wife to Oregon, according to his secretary, Priscilla Wright.

“When he heard about the Rolls, he was a little upset,” Wright said. “He couldn’t believe it.”

The vehicles were parked on an asphalt ramp where aircraft are tied down. Pilots typically leave their cars on the ramp while they are flying, according to several pilots who had gathered at the crash scene.

In the previous crash, a single-engine, four-seater Piper landed in a tree in the front yard of a home on Audrey Avenue, just west of Hawthorne Boulevard, early Sunday. No one was seriously hurt.