Plane Crashes After Burbank Takeoff; 3 Die

A single-engine plane crashed moments after taking off from Burbank Airport on Wednesday, killing all three aboard, when the pilot apparently fell short while attempting an emergency landing on Interstate 5.

The disabled plane angled down toward the traffic-filled roadway, its wings dipping back and forth, then smashed into the ground just yards from the busy freeway, witnesses said.

Burbank firefighters arrived quickly with fire-retardant foam, but there was no fire.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mitch Barker said the Beechcraft Sundowner had taken off from the airport on its way to Palo Alto just before the 1:45 p.m. crash.

The pilot had rented the plane in Riverside and then flown to Burbank, where he picked up his parents for the flight to the Bay Area, said Thomas Wilcox, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.

The Los Angeles County coroner withheld the identities of the victims Wednesday evening pending notification of relatives.

Officials were unable to immediately establish the cause of the crash.

Wilcox said a preliminary examination showed that the propeller was not turning on impact, suggesting engine failure, but he added that “it’s quite possible that the pilot saw impact was imminent and he could have cut the power off.”

There were no reports of a distress call to the airport tower, Wilcox said. The pilot was properly licensed with the FAA, but had fewer than 150 hours of logged flight time, Wilcox said. It had not been determined whether the plane had gas in its tank, he said.

The wreckage will be taken to Compton Airport for thorough examination.

Airport spokesman Victor Gill said the plane took off to the east, then turned north, crossing the freeway. Witnesses said it appeared to have turned back and was approaching the freeway from the north when it dropped sharply at the last moment.

It crashed into the north bank of the freeway at the Cohasset Street underpass in Los Angeles, less than a block from the border of Burbank.

“It’s obvious they made some attempt to land,” said LAPD spokesman Lt. Tony Alba, echoing the accounts of several witnesses.

“Its wings were dipping left to right,” said witness Jim Wahler, “and it appeared to have almost no airspeed whatsoever.”

“He was going awful slow,” said Carmen McMickens of Pasadena, who was driving on the freeway when she saw the plane overhead.

“I saw it rocking and then I thought, ‘This plane is going down.’ ”

McMickens said she watched the plane descend from about 80 feet and then pitch suddenly to one side as it crashed, crushing the cockpit area.

Exiting at the next offramp, McMickens circled back and reached the crash site at Glenoaks Boulevard and Cohasset Street before firefighters cordoned off the intersection.

Gill said the last previous fatal crash of a flight from Burbank occurred in 1990, when four people died in a single-engine Piper Warrior on a training flight to Santa Barbara. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the pilot’s judgment was impaired by the use of marijuana.

The most recent nonfatal crash occurred in April, when a landing gear failure caused a Cessna 310 to tip onto its nose. No injuries were reported.

Times staff writers Efrain Hernandez and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this story.