Watch This Small Plane Crash Onto a Beach After Mechanical Issues Mid-Flight
Witnesses say they heard sputtering and saw smoke coming from the plane’s engine before it hit the water.
Beachgoers in Ocean City, Maryland got a little more spectacle than they bargained for Tuesday evening when a small airplane was forced to make an emergency landing into the Atlantic Ocean after its engine acted up mid-flight.
According to CBS News, the unexpected landing happened at approximately 6:19 p.m. at a beach near 21st Street. Nobody on the ground or in the water was hurt. The plane's pilot, 23-year-old Trevor H. Deihl from Reedville, Virginia, was the only person on board and was evacuated by paramedics and released, according to police.
Ocean City PD also says the plane was forced to land after experiencing mechanical issues, a claim that's backed up by witnesses who say they heard sputtering and saw smoke spewing from the aircraft's engine. "I happened to look up and I saw the plane coming right directly over top of us, and I said to my husband, 'Look at that! That's strange! It's very close,'" Charlotte Higdon told CBS. "The engine was making a sputtering noise and there was smoke coming out of the one side of it."
"From our angle, it looked like it was coming down in the sand on top of people," she continued. "We were panicking like oh goodness is that going to come down and hit somebody's family on the beach." Thankfully, that didn't happen, as seen in the many Twitter videos of the incident.
Maryland State Police was reportedly investigating the incident but the National Transportation Safety Board has since taken over, according to CBS's Rachel Menitoff.