Pilot, Motorist Escape Serious Injury as Light Plane Landing at Meadowlark Rams Into Car

A small private airplane trying to make an emergency landing at Meadowlark Airport in Huntington Beach on Wednesday afternoon collided with a car parked near the end of the runway, but both the pilot and the car’s driver escaped serious injury.

The impact collapsed the car roof and tore a wing from the plane, yet the pilot apparently suffered only facial cuts and the driver--who was alone in the car--sustained minor cuts on the arm, authorities said.

The accident was the fourth major incident in 11 months and the ninth such accident in nine years at Meadowlark, a small airstrip with a short runway wedged in between housing tracts just east of Huntington Harbour.

Witnesses said the plane--a two-seat, single-engine 1940s model Globe “Swift”--apparently had lost power and was gliding toward the south end of the runway about 2:20 p.m. with the wind. Landing into the wind is the preferred approach.

The plane, piloted by Donald J. Bunker, 59, of Huntington Beach, barely cleared some Quonset huts on the airport grounds but could not clear the car parked just to the right of the runway’s south end.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of the car was Dick Gibboney of Huntington Beach, an airplane parts salesman for Omaha Airplane Supply of Long Beach, who was making out sales reports when his car was struck from behind.

“I can’t tell you anything,” he said. “I didn’t see anything coming. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Nearly every window of Gibboney’s car was smashed, showering the inside with broken glass. The car roof was forced down nearly to the seat tops in every part of the car except over the driver’s seat. The plane’s right landing gear broke off and lodged in the car roof.

“I couldn’t figure what hit me,” Gibboney said. “Then I could see the plane crash in front of me.”

Jon Arnold, pilot of a Huntington Beach Police Department helicopter, said he was flying nearby and saw the accident unfold.

“I assume he (the pilot) had mechanical problems,” Arnold said. “He came in very, very low.”

Another witness said the plane’s propeller was not turning as the aircraft approached the runway.

When Arnold saw the plane crash, he landed his helicopter beside the wreck and his partner ran to the plane with a fire extinguisher.

There was no fire, Arnold said, and Bunker, the pilot, “didn’t look too bad.”

A spokeswoman at Humana Hospital Huntington Beach said that Bunker had been discharged in good condition from the hospital’s emergency room.

George Sandy, an aerial photographer who regularly flies from Meadowlark, said that Bunker is retired from the Los Angeles City Fire Department. Bunker had spent years restoring the small airplane, Sandy said. “He’s had it for about 10 years. It has a new engine, new propeller, new everything.”

Within an hour of the collision, Gibboney’s wife, Ellen, arrived at the airport, embraced her husband and gasped after seeing the destruction of the car: “Oh, my God, Richard, you are a lucky Irishman.”

Wednesday’s accident was the latest in a series of minor-injury incidents at the airport.

Last Sept. 5, a plane ran out of gas and slammed into a hanger. On Sept. 21, a plane crashed through a window of an unoccupied building near the airport. On Sept. 29, a plane taking off lost altitude and hit a Quonset hut at the airport.

Last October, the Huntington Beach City Council, conceding that the accidents mainly have been attributable to pilot error or mechanical failures, asked the owner of the airport to make certain safety improvements.

According to Rich Barnard, assistant to the city administrator, the night landing lights have been repaired and tall shrubs near the runway have been trimmed.

Also, he said, the city is considering blocking off nearby Roosevelt Lane, which runs to the edge of the airport. Some drivers use the street as a shortcut through the airport to reach Warner Avenue. In doing so, they drive beside and sometimes across the runway.

Further improvements are unlikely, Barnard said, because the airport owner, Art Nerio, is planning residential and commercial developments on the land.

“It’s in a preliminary planning stage,” Barnard said. “The (city) staff is doing an analysis of it. It probably won’t come up (before the Planning Commission) until sometime in the fall.”

Nerio was less certain of how quickly the proposal would progress. “We never know,” he said. “We’ve been trying to do it the last 20 years.