2 Pilots Unhurt in Separate Crashes

Two pilots walked away unharmed from unrelated crash landings of small single-engine planes Saturday, authorities said.

In the first incident, a 33-year-old pilot crash-landed his plane about 12:15 a.m. in a dirt field in Tustin east of the Costa Mesa Freeway, police said.

“I ran out of fuel,” said Christopher Welsh, of Newport Beach, shortly after his Cessna landed and flipped over in a freshly plowed field five miles from his destination, John Wayne Airport in Costa Mesa. Welsh was on his way home from Lone Pine when the accident occurred near Edinger Avenue.

“He probably would have been more successful in his landing if the field hadn’t just been plowed,” Tustin Police Lt. Joseph Garcia said. Welsh sought to land at the nearby Tustin military base but was told that it was closed, Garcia said.

The sight of the downed plane, visible from the nearby freeway, caused a traffic slowdown during the morning hours and resulted in numerous calls to law enforcement authorities from concerned motorists.

Welsh was forced to stay at the crash site for about 12 hours as he waited for a private company to remove the plane from the field.

Initial attempts to move the plane were unsuccessful. As a result, its wings had to be removed before it was finally loaded onto a flatbed truck.

“People were calling it in and jumping out of their cars to help,” Garcia said. “The pilot had to explain to them that he was all right and was just waiting for the plane to be moved.”

About noon, an 18-year-old pilot landing at Fullerton Municipal Airport overshot the runway. The unidentified pilot’s plane crashed through an airport fence and ended up on Dale Street in an industrial area north of Commonwealth Avenue, said Fullerton Police Lt. Geoff Spalding.

“I don’t know if there were technical difficulties or if there was pilot error,” Spalding said. “He landed on a quiet street where there is not a lot of traffic.”

There is a long-standing debate over the safety of the airport, which borders Buena Park. In the past 10 years, 24 planes have crashed and nine people have been killed at or near the airport.

That toll includes three who died last November when a single-engine plane trying to land in heavy fog slammed into a Fullerton townhouse a half-mile from the airport, killing the pilot and his passenger and a woman asleep in her room.

That incident marked the first time someone on the ground had been killed since the airport opened in 1927.

Airport officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.