Harrison Ford Almost Crashed His Airplane Again
This time, the aging Star Wars actor nearly took out a commercial jet.
While trying to land his Aviat Husky a single-engine taildragger at John Wayne Airport in California yesterday, 74-year-old action film star Harrison Ford mistook the taxiway for the runway and almost took out an American Airlines 737 flying a holding pattern.
"Was that airliner meant to be underneath me?" Ford radioed to the tower. He aborted the landing, circled around and successfully set down.
Ford has a nose for drama with aircraft of a types. Two years ago, the Star Wars star was nearly killed when an engine failure in his WWII-era trainer crash landed into a golf course fairway when it lost power shortly after takeoff from the Santa Monica Airport. The Los Angeles Fire Department said that Ford suffered “fair to moderate injury” in the “medium to high impact on the grass at Penmar Golf Course.”
Before that, Ford wrecked his helicopter while practicing autorotations in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, and the following year wind shear forced his Beechcraft Bonanza to make an emergency landing at Lincoln Municipal Airport in Nebraska.
That same year, Ford, who evidently volunteered his services for rescue missions near his Jackson, Wyoming residence, used his Bell 407 helicopter to rescue an ailing hiker stranded on Table Mountain. “He was wearing a T-shirt and a cowboy hat,” the hiker told ABC News. “He didn’t look like I’d ever seen him before.”
