Ot­to Car­ring­ton

A light air­craft crashed just be­fore land­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and two peo­ple were hos­pi­talised fol­low­ing the dar­ing crash-land­ing in farm­lands on the perime­ter of the air­port.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 9.48 am yes­ter­day, when a flight train­ing air­craft, reg­is­tra­tion num­ber 9YTJU, was head­ing to­wards the air­port for a sched­uled land­ing at run­way 10. How­ev­er, the air­craft, a Di­a­mond DA40 Light four-seater mod­el, re­port­ed­ly ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties and the pi­lot had to ex­e­cute a forced land­ing.

The plane crash-land­ed on the bank of the Orop­une Riv­er, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 feet from the air­port, near­est to the CAL Air­lines hangar.

Guardian Me­dia was told that flight in­struc­tor Ran­dell James, of Aer­i­al World Ser­vices Ltd, was con­duct­ing a train­ing flight with fe­male stu­dent Marelle Dil­lon, when they were forced to make the emer­gency land­ing.

The two were both tak­en to the Ari­ma Med­ical Fa­cil­i­ty for treat­ment. James was said to have suf­fered mi­nor in­juries to his shoul­der and chest while Dil­lon suf­fered in­juries to her col­lar bone. The in­juries were not life threat­en­ing.

Farmer Hemraj Lakhan recalls his experience when a light engine plane crashed near to his garden in Piarco yesterday. picture ABRAHAM DIAZ

Farmer and eye­wit­ness Hem­raj Lack­han shared his ver­sion of the events with a me­dia crew hours af­ter the in­ci­dent.

He said, “I see this plane com­ing to­wards me and I see it com­ing down to me and it keeps com­ing to me on the trac­tor, so I stopped the trac­tor and I start­ed wav­ing my hands to­wards the plane be­cause I got so fright­ened. So I de­cid­ed to jump off the trac­tor and seek cov­er, as the plane flew over the trac­tor, I saw the plane land and start­ed to tum­ble in the riv­er and land­ed on the bank of the riv­er.”

Hem­raj added, “When I turned around my trac­tor and rushed to the scene, they were out­side al­ready. The young la­dy was ly­ing on the ground and the man was on his phone mak­ing calls, he told us that he had me­chan­i­cal prob­lems.”

He added that the two were fright­ened af­ter the crash and he too was hap­py that they were alive.

“I thought I was dead hon­est­ly when I saw the plane com­ing hon­est­ly,” Hem­raj ex­claimed.

The Air­port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, in a me­dia re­lease, al­so con­firmed the in­ci­dent.

The au­thor­i­ty not­ed that oth­er flights were not im­pact­ed by the event and op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued as nor­mal at the Pi­ar­co Air­port.