Small plane crash-lands on Fire Island beach: ‘Coming right at us’
A small plane crash-landed on a Fire Island beach Monday afternoon, scaring the daylights out of beach goers who watched it careen into the sand before it finally came to a stop.
“I turned, and I saw this plane coming right at us, and it was real low, and it was wobbling a little bit,” eyewitness David New told CBS News about the single-engine Piper PA-28 that bore down on Atlantique Beach at about 12:15 p.m.
“All of a sudden, the nose hit the sand, and it flipped straight up,” he continued. “We thought it was going to tip, but it came back down. It was, what, 50 feet from us?”
Both people onboard were OK — no injuries were reported, and New said both got out of the plane on their own.
The pilot experienced engine trouble just before the hard landing, according to Newsday.
“They landed right where they could land,” Ocean Beach Fire Chief George Hesse told the outlet. “It was a light beach day.”
The plane is registered to a flight school in Nassau County, CBS said.
The Federal Aviation Administration will likely post a preliminary report about the incident on Tuesday.
