Pilot escapes serious injury when small plane runs out of fuel, crashes upside-down in field east of Bend Airport

(Update: Adding video)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – A small-plane pilot from Washington state escaped serious injury Friday afternoon when he ran out of fuel on approach to the Bend Airport and tried to make an emergency landing in a field, but the landing gear caught a barbed-wire fence, flipping the plane upside-down.

First responders were dispatched to the aircraft-emergency call at 12:26 p.m. in a field off the 22000 block of Nelson Road at Santa Cruz Avenue, less than 2,000 feet east of the Bend Municipal Airport east of the city.

Pilot David Lee Rudd, 62, of Asotin, Washington, was alone in the red single-engine 1946 Silvaire Luscombe 8A plane and said he was flying from Lewiston, Idaho to visit family in Medford.

Deschutes County sheriff’s Sergeant Jason Wall told deputies he had planned to land at the Bend Municipal Airport, but a few miles out, “he experienced what he believed to be a loss of fuel to the engine,”

As a result, Rudd said he was trying to land in the field when the landing gear struck a barbed-wire fence, causing the plane to overturn. Wall said Rudd got out and fully cooperated with investigators.

Rudd told us about the landing and what went awry.

"So I shoved the nose down, got a little more speed, made the flare, and, caught that fence right there,” Rudd told us at the scene. “And so, yeah, I flipped the plane over.”

"I don't get it - I don't understand how I ran out of fuel. That's what's rally driving me nuts, and the GPS is going to tell me," he said.

Rudd said he’s had a similar rough landing before - in the same plane - but not like this.

“I had an incident where I hit a chuckhole at about 10 miles an hour and flipped the plane over - this one,” he said, gesturing to the overturned Luscombe in the field. “I fixed it all back up again, and it was beautiful. I had it as good as new!”

And this time? Looking at the turned-over plane, Rudd said: "I don't think -- yeah, it's going to be trashed this time."

Still, he was able to walk away with just some cuts and bruises.

The field owner's grandson, Grant Floyd, said he was in his house and didn’t see or hear the crash.

“I didn’t even know a plane crashed in our field until the ambulance showed up,” Floyd said. “We just looked out the window and saw a sheriff’s (car), ambulance and four or five pickup trucks.”

Floyd said a neighbor “saw him fly really down low, close to the tree line, heard the engine cut out” before the plane tried to land and crashed.

Despite the damage, Floyd said he was proud of the fence they built, which stopped the plane that could have hit some trees about 200 yards ahead.

Wall said the Federal Aviation Administration was notified of the crash to conduct an investigation. The FAA said the agency and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. The NTSB will lead the investigation and will provide any updates.

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