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SAN JOSE, Calif. (KTVU) - Investigators are looking into what caused a small plane to crash into a house in San Jose near Reid-Hillview Airport as more is coming out about what may have gone wrong.
Juan Gonzalez owns the house where the Cessna 172 crashed Sunday afternoon.
His three grown children were home at the time.
Gonzalez says they were lucky to be unharmed and the family who rents the converted garage in front of the home left 20 minutes before the crash.
"They were lucky," said Gonzalez. "And one of those kids wanted to stay home."
After 40 years living on Evelyn Avenue, his neighbor Frank Lopez is used to hearing planes take off but Sunday heard something unusual.
"I heard the plane just all of a sudden sounded like a weird noise and then I heard the crash," said Lopez.
Neighbors say they helped pull two injured young men from the front of the plane and a female in the back was able to walk away.
"He said 'Thank you for saving my life!'" said Lopez.
Aiport officials say it appears the single-engine Cessna had engine trouble shortly after take-off, then banked left and tried to turn around to land on another runway.
The mayday call recorded by air traffic control.
This is not the first accident in this neighborhood.
Gonzalez remembers a triple-fatal crash from the late 1980s and says he and other neighbors worry about their safety.
"Safety-wise it's not an indication of the airport being any less safe than it has been for the history of the airport," said Eric Peterson, Santa Clara County Airports Director. "It's still a very safe general aviation airport."
Airport officials say the plane is a rental that belongs Squadron 2, a company which rents planes and runs a flight school at Reid-Hillview.
An employee tells KTVU there was not an instructor on-board as previously reported.
All 3 plane occupants are expected to survive.
The NTSB is leading the investigation and expects to release more details in a preliminary report sometime next week.