FREMONT, Mich. — The pilot of a small Cessna plane walks away with his life after his plane crashes in a field.
It happened some time around 2 pm.
Brent Tanis described hearing what sounded too close for comfort. “It just sound like a helicopter going over the house. So I went and looked, and I seen a bunch of dust fly,” he said.
“So I ran outside, and the plane was upside down, and I saw the guy climbing out,” he recalled.
“I didn’t think that he’d come out. I thought it’d go up in flames honestly,” he said.
Tanis said he ran back into his home and called 911.
FOX 17 has learned that the plane belongs to Premier Skydiving. The owner tells FOX 17 that the pilot had just let off some sky divers, he was flying back into the Fremont Municipal Airport to pick up some more.
He made a “forced off-field landing” in a nearby corn field, landing on its roof. It’s unclear what caused the early landing.
“I don’t know what the emergency procedures are. I do know that this particular pilot is one of the very few pilots I know that could walk away from a situation like this with the condition of that field and that type of aircraft,” Amy Schram, Premier Skydiving co-owner, said.
“He was fortunate enough to walk away from it, as far as what we can tell, uninjured. He walked away on his own,” Schram said.
The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to show up to the scene Monday to investigate.
“Had it been another pilot, things may not have turned out so good,” Schram said.
She said the pilot was shaken up. The airplane was damaged.
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