Three employees of Tesla Motors died this morning when their Cessna 310 crashed in a residential neighborhood in East Palo Alto, California.
No one else was hurt when the plane landed on a home daycare center moments after taking off and skidded down the street, sparking several fires. Company CEO Elon Musk confirmed those aboard the planes were employees of the Silicon Valley automaker but offered no other details.
“Three Tesla employees were on board a plane that crashed in East Palo Alto early this morning,” Musk said in a statement. “We are withholding their identities as we work with the relevant authorities to notify the families. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for us.”
A man who said he had flown with the pilot told KTVU News the man flying the twin-engine plane was “a high-ranking official” at Tesla but there is no further word on who might have been aboard. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the plane is owned by Doug Bourn, a senior electric engineer at Tesla, though it is not clear whether he was aboard.
The plane went down in heavy fog shortly after taking off from Palo Alto Airport. It was bound for the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, where Tesla has a design studio.
The plane took off at 7:55 a.m. and lost power shortly thereafter, said East Palo Alto police Capt. John Chalmers. It hit a power line or an electrical tower about one mile northeast of the airport, shearing a wing, and crashed into a home daycare center in the 1200 block of Beech Street. The home caught fire as the plane slid down the street, hitting three cars that also caught fire, authorities said.
The initial crash created a loud boom followed by a second boom that shook nearby houses, the Chronicle reports. Firefighters extinguished the fires within 30 minutes. No one on the ground was injured, Chalmers said.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the plane is a Cessna 310, tail number N5225J, registered to Unique Air Inc. of Santa Clara, California. The National Transportation Safety Board has joined the FAA in the investigation. Menlo Park Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman told the San Jose Mercury News mechanical failure or poor visibility due to heavy fog most likely caused the crash.
“The plane landed in the center of the street,” Schapelhouman said. “If not, many more individuals would have been impacted, perhaps killed. It is either very fortunate or intentional that he was able to do that.”
Space-X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s aerospace venture, is based in Hawthorne. Much of the design and engineering work for the Model S sedan is being done there. Tesla recently closed a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy to get the car built, and the company is preparing to go public with an IPO.
Photo: Associated Press / Paul Sakuma. Menlo Park firemen look at the scene of a small plane that crashed into a house in East Palo Alto, California.
