Plane's descent was 'strange' before rough landing

VENICE — An eyewitness to a rough landing at the Venice Municipal Airport on Thursday said the plane’s speed and angle of descent were “strange.”

Larry Wilson said he was approaching the Circus Bridge from the south when he saw a little white plane about 100 yards in front of him that seemed to be “floating down from the sky just over the bridge.”

The plane was descending rapidly but was going too slow for a proper landing, he said.

“It looked like he was losing altitude way too fast,” he said — so fast he wasn’t sure the plane would clear the road.

“It wasn’t nearly going to make it to the runway,” he said.

When he reached the bridge, he said, he saw the plane drop “precipitously — just plop down in the grass and throw up dirt and turf and flip over.”

The pilot was lucky the ground was wet, Wilson said.

He said he pulled off the road to call 911 and about a minute later saw the occupants of the plane get out, apparently unhurt.

The two-seat, single-engine Flight Design CTSW had been occupied by a pilot and a passenger who weren’t injured, according to a city news release.

The National Transportation Safety Board doesn’t yet have a record of the wreck on its website. However, records at FlightAware.com show the plane took to the air twice Thursday: once from 8:03 to 8:19 a.m. and a second time from 11:14 to 11:42 a.m., both times from Venice.

They also show it was involved in a similar wreck on Aug. 21, 2016, in which the plane “experienced a bounced landing and subsequent nosegear collapse upon landing …. The airplane sustained minor damage and the sole pilot onboard was not injured during the incident.”

That also happened at Venice. Both are classified as “minor.”