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FORTY FORT — Two occupants narrowly escaped injury when their small plane made an emergency landing on a recreational soccer field near the Wyoming Valley Airport Thursday afternoon.
“It could have been a lot worse,” said borough Mayor Andy Tuzinski, speaking in his role as emergency management director.
Tuzinski was at the scene with first responders after the aircraft came down at 4:12 p.m.
Aboard the aircraft were two men, a pilot and instructor, who had flown out of Towanda, Bradford County, and were preparing to land in Forty Fort for refuelling, Tuzinski said.
As they approached the airfield, the pair experienced a problem with the landing gear, he added. Unable to use the manual override, they opted to make a controlled crash-landing on the empty soccer field just south of the airport’s runway.
“They did everything they needed to do and they brought the plane down safely,” Tuzinski said. “There were no injuries and they were able to walk away from the plane.”
The plane will have to remain on the field until National Transportation Safety Board officials arrive to perform an investigation, Tuzinski said. Because no one was injured, that may take a few days.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records for the plane’s registration number, it is a 1960 single-engine Piper registered to an owner in Bradford County with a certificate valid through June 2020.
It is not the first plane to touch down on that soccer field.
In 1988 another small aircraft crashed there, resulting in the deaths of two people. Tuzinski, a longtime firefighter, was on the scene for that incident as well, he recalled Thursday.
“I am glad everything went as well as it could have today,” he said.