Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Cessna 175 Skylark, N9399B: Incident occurred March 09, 2021 in Brunswick County, North Carolina


Federal Aviation Administration / Flight Standards District Office; Greensboro, North Carolina

Aircraft experienced engine issues and landed in a field. 


Date: 09-MAR-21
Time: 22:32:00Z
Regis#: N9399B
Aircraft Make: CESSNA
Aircraft Model: 175
Highest Injury: NONE
Aircraft Missing: No
Damage: MINOR
Activity: PERSONAL
Flight Phase: EN ROUTE (ENR)
Operation: 91
City: OCEAN ISLE BEACH
State: NORTH CAROLINA

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, North Carolina (WWAY) —  A pilot and student pilot are lucky to be alive after avoiding a plane crash near Ocean Isle Beach Tuesday evening.

The flight instructor Juan Mueses and pilot under instruction, Lane Spetrino, were flying to Conway, South Carolina, Tuesday when something went wrong with the engine.

‘We were cruising about 4,500 feet and then checking the gauges, and then just a loud bang and a lot of engine rumbling,” Spetrino said. “Smoke poured into the cabin, we had to pop a window, and at this point we knew we had to make an emergency landing.”

Mueses contacted Myrtle beach airport and to find the closest airport to make a landing.

“Looking for the closest airport where we could do a landing, which was Ocean Isle, but we were about 10 miles away,” Mueses said. “So at that moment we realized there was no way we could make it all the way to the airport.”

They began looking for a nearby field where they could try and land the Cessna 175 Skylark, aiming for one off Longwood Road NW in Brunswick County near Shallotte.

“I’m gripping the yoke pretty hard, like this ain’t good,” Spetrino said of the landing.

They ended up making a perfect landing.

“The fact that the ground is just so sturdy, if it had been wet like a week ago the owners of the property were telling us, we could have nose dived into the ground, we could have tipped the plane over just by veering left, veering right,” Spetrino said. “We didn’t hit any power lines or anything like that.”

Mueses attributes good training as the reason neither they nor anyone else were hurt.

“We practice for emergency situations almost everyday with the students for situations like this,” Mueses said. “You never know when it’s going to happen.”

Although they’ve prepared for situations like this, they say this is the first time they’ve put their training to the test.

“This was the first time,” Mueses said.

“This was my first time too, hopefully the last one too,” Spetrino said. “I don’t want to do that again, but I’m going to continue to fly though. I still love it.”

The North Carolina Highway Patrol is investigating. We have reached out to them for additional details and are waiting for a response.

1 comment:

  1. Perfect "soft" field to land on too. Looks like you could operate a DC-3 out of there. Lucky guys because in the pine and hardwood tree packed Southeast, good off-field landing options are not just everywhere you look out the window!

    ReplyDelete