Aerial view of Reid-Hillview Airport's runways surrounded by East San José neighborhoods and freeways

Two Crashes in Two Days Near Reid-Hillview Put East San Jose’s Long Airport Fight Back on the Street

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Top image: Reid-Hillview Airport and surrounding East San José neighborhoods from the air, 2008. Photo: Ikluft / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

A small propeller plane crashed onto Capitol Expressway at Excalibur Drive in East San Jose shortly after 3 p.m. Saturday, injuring the two adults and one child aboard, the San José Fire Department said. All three were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, NBC Bay Area reported, “out of an abundance of caution.”

No vehicles were involved, and a minor fuel spill was absorbed at the scene, the department said, according to ABC7. The crash blocked traffic and forced the Alum Rock Avenue off-ramp from Interstate 680 to close for a few hours, NBC Bay Area reported, and the plane was towed from the intersection Saturday evening.

What is known about the flight

ABC7 reported that Federal Aviation Administration records show the plane is a 1968 Cessna 177A Cardinal registered to Flying Twenty Inc., a nonprofit flying club for San José State University students, alumni and faculty. According to the club’s website, NBC Bay Area reported, its members fly out of nearby Reid-Hillview Airport. The aviation news site AeroCorner reported that public flight-tracking data show the plane took off from Reid-Hillview less than two minutes before its track ended at the crash site, though it noted that no official statement had confirmed the aircraft’s identity.

Officials have not released the cause of the crash or identified the people aboard. Neighbors told NBC Bay Area that there have been other crashes involving planes flying out of Reid-Hillview, but that this was the first so close to their homes.

It was the second incident in two days. On Friday evening, a small plane crash-landed at Reid-Hillview itself because of faulty landing gear, the fire department said, according to San Jose Source. The two people aboard were not hurt and got out on their own, and there was no fuel spill.

An airport already in a fight for its future

Reid-Hillview is owned by Santa Clara County and sits amid dense East San Jose neighborhoods, and it has been the target of what San José Spotlight has called a decades-long fight by activists to shut it down.

In August 2021, county supervisors voted unanimously to eliminate lead exposure from the airport’s operations and to pursue “any and all available paths to early (airport) closure prior to 2031,” San José Spotlight reported at the time. Under a grant agreement with the federal government, the outlet reported, 2031 is the earliest the airport could close. The vote followed a county-commissioned study of blood samples from 17,000 children who lived within a mile and a half of the airport between 2011 and 2020.

The county’s ban on selling leaded aviation fuel at Reid-Hillview and San Martin, which took effect in 2022, led to a federal complaint by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and local pilots and businesses. In March 2025, the FAA determined the ban violated the county’s federal grant obligations and ordered a corrective action plan, AOPA reported. The county appealed, and in October 2025 the FAA granted it another 90-day extension to keep negotiating. The South Bay Chronicle has not independently confirmed the current status of that dispute.

None of that history explains why Saturday’s flight came down, and it would be premature to draw conclusions before investigators do. AeroCorner noted that when the National Transportation Safety Board opens a case, it generally aims to complete it, including a probable cause, within 12 to 24 months.

The long view

The debate over Reid-Hillview has largely been argued on two axes: lead, and land. Opponents of the airport point to children’s health and to environmental justice for the less affluent East Side neighborhoods around it; defenders argue that unleaded fuel solves the health problem and that the airfield provides affordable flight training that is hard to find elsewhere in the Bay Area.

A weekend like this one adds a third axis that both sides will invoke: what it means to operate a training airport inside a neighborhood. A Cessna on Capitol Expressway with no one killed is, by aviation standards, a fortunate outcome. For the families who live under the approach, it is also a reminder that the airport’s future is not only a question for the FAA and the Board of Supervisors. It is a quality-of-life question decided, one flight at a time, over their roofs.

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