When the engine of his small plane failed, a 58-year-old kept his nerve. He steered the machine into a cornfield and not only saved his own life.
What happened to a 58-year-old private pilot on the weekend in the Wolfsberg area (Carinthia) can confidently be described as a nightmare. When the man with his single-engine machine was about to approach the St. Marein airfield, the engine of the small plane suddenly failed. But the experienced pilot managed an almost perfect emergency landing. He landed the machine in a corn field, where it overturned. Nevertheless, the aircraft remained almost undamaged – and, more importantly, the pilot and his companion (42) and a dog survived the incident unscathed.
“Of course your heart will stop there”, says pilot Sebastian Feiner, member of the Austrian Cockpit Association (ACA), paying tribute to his colleague in Lavanttal. “The plane glides very well, when it touches down it is around 110 to 120 km / h.” Choosing the corn field as the runway was “definitely the right decision,” says Feiner. In addition to experience, luck is still a factor in how such an emergency landing turns out. “The plants slow down, but you don’t see much and you can’t judge whether you’re heading for an irrigation ditch, for example.” Feiner emphasizes that emergency landings are not only trained in pilot training, but also every two years when the license is renewed.
“Finding a field and landing there is the ideal case,” says Markus Pohanka from Austro Control. “And without any major damage.” It is important to: “bring the aircraft to the ground in a controlled manner and land against the wind.” Nevertheless, the incident near Wolfsberg airfield was a “spectacular emergency landing with a successful outcome”. Postscript Pohanka: “This is definitely something that every pilot hopes that this will never happen.”
Incidentally, there was no more than one report to Austro Control. “We get it automatically, it has to be like that,” says spokesman Pohanka. However, there will be no investigation by the Aircraft Accident Commission based in the Ministry of Transport. True to the motto: It went well, nothing happened.