Plane makes emergency landing on old runway at Great Park

A small single-engine plane made an emergency landing Thursday on an unused runway at Irvine’s Great Park.

The Cessna 150 took off from Long Beach and was headed to Palomar Airport in Carlsbad when it started having engine trouble at about 3 p.m., Orange County Fire Authority officials said.

The pilot headed to an old runway on the former El Toro Marine base, now the location of the Great Park.

The pilot and a passenger were the only ones aboard the plane.

“Nobody was hurt,” Fire Authority Capt. Larry Kurtz said. “It was a good landing.”

Investigators are looking into what went wrong with the plane, Kurtz said.

— Jeremiah Dobruck

Twitter: @jeremiahdobruck