AWC new’s

A United States F-18 fighter jet has crashed into a residential neighbourhood in California, destroying a house, but there are no immediate reports of injuries, aviation and military officials said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said in a statement the pilot of the jet ejected as the plane made its approach to land at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, near San Diego, shortly before midday on Monday (local time).

A Marine Corps spokesman meanwhile, has confirmed the plane was carrying two crew but their fate was not immediately known.

The cause of the crash is also unknown, Captain Carl Redding said.

There are no immediate reports of the pilot’s condition or possible injuries on the ground, but local television showed plumes of thick white smoke rising from the crash site in the suburb of University City.

The charred remains of a building were also clearly visible.

The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department said the crash destroyed one home and extensively damaged another before a blaze at the scene was extinguished.

One eyewitness told a local television reporter that the plane had spiraled out of control like a scene from 1986 movie Top Gun, the hit film about a US Navy fighter pilot played by Tom Cruise.

“It just spiraled right out of Top Gun. It came flying down. My mother screamed,” the man said, reporting that he had seen the plane’s pilot after he parachuted to earth at a nearby school playing field.

“He just looked like he was dazed like ‘Oh, my God, what happened over civilian air space?’,” he said.

Witnesses told local radio the pilot might have been heading the plane to crash in a big canyon nearby, thereby avoiding the school.

Gayle Newcomb, an assistant at University City High School near the crash site, said the plane “missed the school entirely” and all the students are safe.