A skilled pilot used quick thinking and years of expertise to avoid danger after his crop duster sputtered out Tuesday afternoon.
Sometime in the noon hour, Scotts Bluff County authorities were alerted to a plane that was forced to make an emergency landing in a sugar beet field near County Roads 27 and K just south of the Tri-State Canal.
KNEB News caught up with Sheriff Mark Overman who explained what transpired.
“We were notified this afternoon of a of an aircraft that went down. And so we got here and discovered that there was a crop duster. We’ve spoken with the pilot who’s a very experienced top pilot, and he said that he had a mechanical problem. He was losing a little pressure and he could see oil leaking. And so he was trying to make it back to the airport, and then then he realized he couldn’t make it back to the airport. So he set it down here.”
“And you have to say that he did a magnificent job because he set it down. It appears there is no damage to the aircraft. There’s certainly no damage to it. And the mechanics have been here already. They found a bad oil line that was leaking. And so we’ve done our investigation, and there’s no injuries. We’ve also been in contact with the National Transportation Safety Board. I don’t think, from what I I hear, they don’t seem to have a lot of interest in this, but but they like to know about it so that we did what our protocol is, is to notify them.”
Overman says airport crew were on site discussing how they’d get the crop duster back to the airport. Some early discussions included towing it, but as of publication time the plane remained in the field.
