Pilot Lands Plane on Busy Freeway : Accident: No one was hurt when a Cessna 210, which was having engine trouble, hit a car and van on Santa Ana Freeway.

A small plane crash-landed atop a car on the Santa Ana Freeway Saturday, then plowed into a van with seven people, forcing it into a light pole. Everyone walked away unhurt.

“On a busy freeway like this, the fact that no one was injured is incredible,” said Ron Frank, a safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration. “Everyone was very lucky.”

The plane, a Cessna 210, developed engine trouble about five minutes after taking off from Fullerton Airport at 5 p.m., and the pilot crash-landed on the freeway just south of Beach Boulevard.

“The freeway was the closest thing I could make and hopefully not kill anybody,” the shaken pilot, Jim Beebe, 25, of Fullerton, said shortly after the accident.

The plane landed atop a southbound 1989 Ford Probe, smashing in the car’s roof and shattering its windows. The plane continued moving forward and struck the back of a 1989 Chevrolet van, which smashed into a light pole on the side of the freeway, California Highway Patrol officials said.

The man and woman who had been inside the Ford Probe were visibly upset as they sat on the side of the freeway waiting for a tow truck to take their car away. They said they were too shaken to talk.

“A plane just hit us but we’re fine,” said the man, his voice cracking. “We just went through a lot right now.”

The driver of the van, Roger Tsui of Orange, was traveling with six friends visiting from China.

“I feel so relieved,” Tsui said as he stood on the freeway shoulder with his friends. “I’m so relieved that nothing serious happened. It happened so fast. I was just trying to stop the car. When I hit the light pole, I thought, ‘This is it. This is going to be the end.’ Fortunately, the pole broke when we hit it. I think it was the design of that light pole that saved us.”

Beebe, a 25-year-old airplane mechanic who works for Wings Aviation, a flight school and repair station that operates out of Fullerton Airport, said he had taken the plane out on a maintenance flight. Within minutes, it developed engine trouble.

But Beebe told FAA investigators on the scene that he had been advised by his boss not to talk to officials without the presence of his attorney.

Frank said Beebe’s decision to land on the freeway was reasonable.

“The pilot had at least partial power failure and possibly total power failure. . . . He picked the most open space that he could find to land. He picked as reasonable a place as any considering it was such a crowded area with no open spaces.”

The plane did not have its landing gear down when it crashed. Frank said if the landing gear had been down, the plane probably would not have stopped as quickly as it did and could have endangered more people.

FAA officials said they will be investigating the accident and will try and determine what went wrong with the plane.

The plane remained in the fast lane of the freeway for several hours after the accident because it was leaking fuel and could not be moved. All but one lane of the freeway were closed into the night, causing a major traffic jam.

But Beebe said he was simply relieved it wasn’t any worse.

“I just walked from away an airplane wreck and no one was hurt so I’m feeling pretty lucky right now. Right now, I just feel like finding my girlfriend and giving her a quick kiss.”