A single-engine Cessna went down Wednesday south of Lake Mathews in what appeared to be a forced landing by the pilot, who escaped injury, along with his passenger.
The controlled crash was reported at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday in the 15100 block of Lake Mathews Drive, near Gavilan Springs Road, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and Riverside County Fire Department.
“Our dispatch center received multiple reports of an aircraft down,” county fire Battalion Chief Josh Rivers said in an online post to the agency’s social media pages. “Our first arriving engines found the single-engine Cessna with two occupants, (who) were both non-injury.”
There was no fire following the forced landing, which occurred on a tract without any homes. Photographs and video from the scene showed that the Cessna 177 Cardinal, tail number N34852, had nosed into the dirt. Otherwise, there didn’t appear to be much damage.
It was unclear whether the pilot, whose identity was not released, experienced engine trouble or another emergency that prompted the off-airport landing.
Lake Mathews and the space immediately surrounding it comprise a designated practice area, where numerous fixed-wing and rotorcraft fly daily, coming mainly from Inland Empire airports.
There was no immediate word on where the Cessna was headed, or where it had departed. The online registration record indicated the plane was manufactured in 1973 and is owned by a company in Prescott, Arizona.