Small Airplane Crash

Example Bush Plane

Today at lunch Marc tells a story. About a month ago, a of his was flying a bush plane and attempted to land on an island in the Columbia River. Came in for a smooth landing on strip of sand and one of the landing gear legs broke off. The airplane turned and went into the water. The pilot got out okay, but the airplane is under water and the river current is trying to drag it away. It's not very deep there so he is able to grab hold of the tail and keep it from going anywhere. Not a tenable situation.

Fortunately, the crew of a passing tugboat saw him crash and came over to help. The tug positioned itself to block the flow of the river and gave the pilot a rope with which he was able to secure the aircraft. The tug has business elsewhere, so it leaves, but he calls a buddy tug who doesn't have any pressing business and he comes over to help out.

That evening Marc and a couple other guys took a duck boat out to the island. On the way there they were passed by a Columbia County police boat. They expected nothing but grief from the police, but surprisingly the police turned out to very helpful. Probably helped that our crew were not drunk and not behaving like assholes.

They pulled the plane out of the water and set about drying out the engine and getting ready to take off the wings. They came back the next two days with a work platform borrowed from a local marina and ferried the various parts of the airplane back to dry land.

What caused the problem? Did a wheel fall in a hole or hit a big rock? Near as we can tell, no. Apparently the landing gear leg just snapped off. A stress fracture, maybe? Very weird.