Pictured above: A private plane crash landed 2 miles from campus at 3:45 p.m. This crash is the latest in a series of crashes of planes approaching Albert Whited. Devin Rodriguez | The Crow’s Nest
By Devin Rodriguez
A small private plane crash landed on 18th Ave S and 16th St in St Petersburg, hitting two vehicles.
Five people were injured in the crash and three were transported to the area hospital, according to officials on the scene.
The plane was headed to the Albert Whitted Airfield, which is across the street from campus, when it was forced to land.
The fixed-wing, multi-engine Noble Air private plane needed to perform an emergency crash landing after mechanical or engine failure, the two pilots were able to evacuate the plane after landing, according to officials on the scene. It is unclear if either were those transferred to the hospital.
The roadway would be tied up for a number of hours and that the Federal Aviation Administration was en route, according to Lieutenant Steven Lawrence, the deputy fire marshall for St Petersburg Fire Department.
He said the call came in at 3:45 p.m. and fire response was roughly four to five minutes to the scene.
“Talking to the pilot we feel he did perform an emergency landing versus just falling and crashing the plane,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence said the emergency landing was a good attempt to minimize damage.
“The potential of picking this roadway versus other roadways, or the fact that he didn’t crash into a structure killing or injuring somebody inside the structure, unfortunately he did crash into two other vehicles and could have seriously injured those inside the vehicles,” said Lawrence.
This incident is the latest in a series of crashes by planes approaching Albert Whited.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, there have been four accidents at the airport in 2017:
** On Feb. 11, a plane carrying two people crashed into the seawall at the east end of the main runway. No one was hurt.
** On March 1, a student pilot escaped serious injury when his plane crashed while he was attempting a landing on the north-south runway.
** On March 9, another pilot escaped injury when her plane skidded off a runway.
** On Sept. 1, a small plane rolled off the end of the north-south runway into the bay, but neither the pilot nor passenger was seriously injured.
In 2014, a small plane approaching the airport from the north barely missed hitting high-rise condo towers before crashing into Vinoy Park, less than a mile north of the airport. Two of the four occupants were seriously injured.
Two years earlier, one man died and another was injured when their plane nose-dived into the main runway shortly after taking off.
The plane came to rest about 100 feet from the fence at the end of the runway, just across the street from USFSP, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
This is a developing story, will be updated as more information becomes available.
