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A small plane executed an emergency landing on the sand in Huntington Beach Monday afternoon. The incident occurred after the pilot reported an engine issue shortly after taking off from nearby John Wayne Airport and landing north of the Santa Ana River Jetties near Pacific Coast Highway and Magnolia Avenue.
The pilot and his nephew were the only people on board and no damages or injuries were reported. Footage of the emergency landing shows there were very few beachgoers nearby. The US Open of Surfing has been underway about two miles north of the location of the emergency landing.
“About five minutes into our flight, the plane slows down, the propeller slows down, and the plane sputters a little bit and shakes,” said Griffin Bremner, who was the passenger on board the plane. “(The pilot) just looks over and he tells me, ‘Griffin, the engine is failing. We’re landing on the beach.’”
The pilot told local media that while training for emergency landings is standard, he was still grateful everything went smoothly.
“When that happens, we run by memory. A very quick check to see if we can get the engine restarted. Not a lot different than in your car. Pump the accelerator, check the ignition, switch tanks, in our case. Given that we were only at 1,000 feet, we immediately made sure the plane was flying at such a speed that it would glide the farthest,” Mike Bremner, the pilot, explained. “When I realized that it wasn’t going to start again, I looked to my right, I saw the beach, the winds were relatively light, and we set it up for landing and we touched down.”
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