Pilot chooses "smooth" fairway for emergency landing
Friday 29 January, 2010
A veteran pilot avoided a potential nasty crash when deciding to bring his plane to safety on a Texas golf course recently, providing those enjoying 18 holes with a different type of hazard to overcome.
Brendan Ford was only 40 minutes from his destination when he heard his engine begin to sputter as it began to run out of fuel.
Thinking quickly, he looked down and saw the pleasant fairways of Hermann Park Golf Course in Houston and decided that this was a suitable place to end his journey.
Nobody was injured as a result, with the course unlikely to be experiencing a high number of players hitting golf balls as the incident happened at approximately 18:00 BST.
Mr Ford said of the golf club: "They have a wonderful golf course. Very smooth fairways and it's a nice place to land your plane if you have to land short."
The incident does not represent the first time that a plane has decided that a golf course was the perfect location to perform an emergency landing.
Last year, golfers were forced to take evasive action on a course in Dundee when a pilot took a leaf out of the Biggles books he read as a child to carry out a soft pancake landing in a tree.
A veteran pilot avoided a potential nasty crash when deciding to bring his plane to safety on a Texas golf course recently, providing those enjoying 18 holes with a different type of hazard to overcome.
