A small Cessna twin-engine plane crashed in East Palo Alto today, killing three Tesla Motors employees and taking out power in parts of the city. The plane took off from Palo Alto airport and reportedly hit some electrical lines. The names of those who were on board have not been released. The plane was registered to Doug Bourn, a senior engineer at Tesla. It is not clear if he was the “high ranking official at Tesla” piloting the plane or if he was even on it.
Nobody on the ground was injured, but two homes caught on fire, including one used as a day care center. Fortunately, the day care center was empty at the time of the crash.
Eric Savitz at Barron’s has been blogging updates about the accident all day. It appears to be responsible for a widespread power outage in Palo Alto, which affected Facebook’s offices and many startups. For example, power is still out at TechCrunch HQ in Palo Alto (although our site is still up because our servers are not there).
The plane was headed to Los Angeles and was an older Cessna 310 manufactured in 1976.
Update: Tesla sent us the following statement from CEO Elon Musk: “Three Tesla employees were on board a plane that crashed in East Palo Alto early this morning. We are withholding their identities as we work with the relevant authorities to notify the families. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for us.”
This is horrible news. My condolences go out to their families.
Same here. My condolences for their families and friends.
Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends.
Time to buy one of these planes: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6749412/
Actually, I posted something similar on Hacker News.
Basically, the only thing that might have made a difference to the out-come would have been NavFLIR, which would make low visibility forced landing safer.
Basically an IR camera on the nose of the plane, which shows on a display (or Head-Up Display) what is going on.
The Gulfstream G450 and G550 have EVS which does add to safety in low-light.
it took out power. think about it. kind of ironic.
It is ironic, because Tesla cars require no power to run!
An electric car that requires no electricity to run?
On topic: This is tragic.
What, they run on perpetual motion or something? :P
Condolences to the friends and family as well.
A little over a year ago another Internet Entrepreneur and Investor, Martin Schaedel, died in a private plan crash in Santa Monica.
http://www.observer.com/2009/o2/last-flight-martin-schaedel
I am very sad to see others having to go through what Martin’s friends did last year. Our deepest sympathies.
Very tragic, my deepest condolences go out to their loved ones.
Wow.
Took out VMWare’s phones too
coming down from the hills into the peninsula today, the fog was impenetrable. even for a rinky-dink airport like palo alto, the air traffic controller (or whatever passes for one) should have disallowed takeoff
but the pilot also shares some blame. there’s no way you can justify taking off in fog like that, i could barely see the cars in front of me this morning
There is no such thing as an air traffic controller “disallowing” a take off. ATC has essentially one job – separation of traffic. It is always the pilot in command’s job to determine appropriate weather conditions and pilot/aircraft fitness prior to a flight.
Air traffic controllers are not allowed to (nor are they expected to) offer advice like that — if they do they could share in the liability. It’s the pilot’s responsibility to decide if he should take off or not.
This is such very sad, sad news. My heart goes out to family, friends and coworkers. Just awful.
Absolutely tragic.
Sorry you’re sitting in the dark…I think the accident deserves more attention.
Prayers to the families and friends.
Condolences to all the families who suffered.
The follow up article on TC is horrible
thanks for letting us know that your servers are still up! never would have guessed after just linking to the story from Twitter…
LOL. This is techcrunch. They aren’t exactly tech superstars. They probably needed outside consulting to understand it themselves.
Its about time. TC is late with this one:
http://www.techwankers.com/2010/02/17/breaking-tesla-execs-in-plane-crash/
insane…
Tragic. This happened just about a mile from my office. Tesla employees as well. So sad.
But it was extremely foggy all morning. Why fly a Cessina out in this kind of weather?
terrible
Agreed, this is a truly sad even.
Sad news when it’s all you hear about while stuck in traffic all the way to work. Prayers to all involved.
My condolences go out to their families.
Why the hell were they flying in that weather?
Conspiracy by the petro industry??
Prayers got out to the families and friends from us techies -sorry to see this happen,
Very sad news about a great company.
It could happen to any one of us.
Oh my god oh my god, 13 workers died in a collapsing coal mine in east india.
Very sad. Thoughts and prayers to families and friends.
Thoughts and prayers to the families. I have a few friends at Tesla and I’m eagerly awaiting news to confirm that they are okay.
A very sad day for the Tesla Motors family. My deepest condolences go out to them, the passengers families, and the individuals who were affected by the crash.
This is very sad. That’s why they shouldn’t let retards fly planes.