TWO SMALL PLANES collided above an airport in California on Thursday, officials said, with multiple fatalities reported.

Federal aviation authorities said two people were on board a twin-engine Cessna 340, and one person was flying in a single-engine Cessna 152.

The planes “collided while the pilots were on their final approaches to Watsonville Municipal Airport,” a small facility around 80 miles (130 kilomters) south of San Francisco.

“No injuries were reported to anyone on the ground,” the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement to AFP.

Emergency personnel investigate the wreckage of the crash Nic Coury / AP Nic Coury / AP / AP

The FAA statement did not specify whether all three people on board the planes had died.

The City of Watsonville’s official social media accounts reported “multiple fatalities.”

The National Transportation Safety Board will lead an investigation.

The planes were about 200 feet (61 metres) in the air when they crashed, a witness told the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

The pilots were on their final approaches to the airport before the collision, the FAA said in a statement Nic Coury / AP Nic Coury / AP / AP

Franky Herrera was driving past the airport when he saw the twin-engine plane bank hard to the right and hit the wing of the smaller aircraft, which “just spiralled down and crashed” near the edge of the airfield and not far from homes, he told the newspaper.

The twin-engine aircraft kept flying but “it was struggling”, Herrera said, and then he saw flames at the other side of the airport.

With reporting by the Press Association