2 Die, 1 Hurt as Plane Leaking Fuel Crashes at Big Bear Airport

Two people were killed and a third person was injured Monday when a small plane leaking fuel crashed into a runway at Big Bear City Airport, authorities said.

A woman and man were pronounced dead at the scene and another woman was airlifted to Loma Linda University Medical Center with mild to moderate injuries, said Staci Johnson, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County sheriff. The passengers’ identities were not released.

It took authorities 20 minutes to extract the three from the aircraft, Johnson said.

Although authorities found a fuel leak and sparking electrical circuits, the exact cause of the crash is still unclear, Johnson said.

Witnesses said the single-engine Piper Cherokee 235 was trying to land when it touched down too far along the runway and lost control. The plane bounced and flipped over before landing upside-down in a bushy ravine, authorities said.

Big Bear resident John Green, 50, was working at a water and sewage pump station about a quarter-mile west of the runway when he saw the plane go down.

The aircraft descended within 50 feet of the runway when it banked hard to the right and disappeared from his view behind the trees, Green said.

“It looked like he was trying to land too late,” Green said. “I figured it crashed because it was a hard right turn and I figured there was no way he would pull out of that.”

But he didn’t hear the plane crash. “I wasn’t sure it was a crash until I saw the firetrucks going that way,” Green said.

The small plane was built in 1963 and owned by a resident of Rancho Cucamonga, said Donn Walker, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Western-Pacific region. It wasn’t immediately known where the plane was coming from.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and the San Bernardino County sheriff’s aviation division will investigate, authorities said. The federal investigation could take months, Walker said.

Slow-speed, non-injury crashes aren’t uncommon at the often-windy mountainous airport tucked in the San Bernardino National Forest, said Cindy Beavers, a San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman.

Times staff writer Stephanie Ramos contributed to this report.