Plane crashes in field outside Salinas airport

SALINAS, Calif. (KION) UPDATE 01/06/20 10:33 p.m. A plane crash just outside the Salinas airport is still under investigation, but first responders tell KION initial reports indicate the plane may have run out of fuel.

As darkness fell over Salinas, the plane was still in the middle of an agricultural field off Moffett Street where it crashed Monday afternoon around 3:40 p.m.

The pilot was making a trip from Monterey to the Salinas.

A replay of the flight comes from Flight Aware showed the plane had a rapid drop in altitude. It was just a few hundred feet from reaching the border of the Salinas airport as it traveled toward the runway. But it never made it to the airport, and instead landed in the dirt.

“We found a single pilot uninjured, walking around the field. No fire or heat or hazardous fluids down as well,” Alex Marshall with the Salinas Fire Department said.

Marshall said the plane has minimal front damage. Initial reports indicate the pilot may have run out of fuel.

“It’s my understanding that airport officials and federal investigators are going to have to come to the scene and conduct a thorough investigation,” Marshall said.

The single-engine Cessna plane is registered to “EFlight Inc” out of Wilmington, Delaware, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

No word on if this was a hard landing or controlled landing. From here, the plane will likely need to be towed out of the field.

We've reached out to the FAA for more information about how this happened, but they have not yet responded to our request for comment.

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Police and fire crews are responding to a plane crash in Salinas.

Officials at the scene tell us the plane that contained only one pilot crashed in a field just outside the airport.

The cause is still under investigation, but nobody was injured in the crash.