A passenger on a private plane in Massachusetts appears to have saved the day.
Just after 3 p.m. local time on Saturday, the woman, 68, took over the controls of a Piper Meridian Turbo Prop six-seat plane and landed the aircraft at Martha’s Vineyard Airport (MVY) “on its belly with no landing gear,” according to theWest Tisbury Police Department(WTPD).
“The female had minor injuries and the male party was extricated from the plane and subsequently med-flighted to Boston for additional treatment,” they add. “The Massachusetts State Police and FAA are involved in the investigation.”
“The airport has just opened the short runway and slowly continuing operations,” the WTPD concluded.
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The Massachusetts State Police (MSP) shared intheir own releaseSaturday that the plane “landed in a grassy area near a runway” at the airport.
When the passenger took over, the incident “resulted in a hard landing outside the runway that caused the aircraft’s left wing to break in half.”
ALAMY
Officials added in the latter release that the pilot — whose age they reported as 79 — and passenger are both residents of Connecticut, and had departed earlier Saturday afternoon from Westchester, New York.
Martha’s Vineyard Airport.GETTY
GETTY
The MSP stated that the crash site has since “been cleared,” while the plane “has been removed to a secure location at the airport.”
The National Transportation Safety Board is also involved in the investigation, according to a statement from the FAA provided toCNN.
source: people.com
