Utah Plane Crash Captured on Cell Phone by Passenger -ORIGINAL FOOTAGE-

2/2/13- I was up for a birthday flight with my wife (her first flight ever), her mother and my seven month old boy when we received the shocking news that our carburator had iced over. After gliding over some field we found an ideal place to land the plane. The pilot was experienced in field landings but unfortunately the snow caused the landing gear to sever from the plane, flipping the plane front to back and smashing the tail before it came to a rest upside down. No one was hurt in the accident save for bruises, whiplash and minor cuts.

More to the story:
The pilot is very experienced and has landed in fields many times before even with snow in the field, just not this much snow. We were looking for roads to land on, but there were just too many power lines next to or crossing these roads. The interstate (large road parallel to flight) can be seen from the beginning of the video, which is a 5 lane road with the middle turn lane. There was absolutely no safe way to land on that road. Had he tried I'm confident that a collision would've occurred and this story could easily have ended in a fatality. The pilot made the BEST landing given the circumstances. Even the way that the plane dug in with its nose, taking the initial force followed by us flipping (instead of a violent abrupt stop) then crunching the tail also absorbing the rest of the collision was the best possible way to crash.
You can see more of the actual destruction to the plane and the way it landed if you look at the other video of the aftermath "Utah Plane Crash Aftermath Wreckage -ORIGINAL FOOTAGE-" located here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sCsIx...
Crash only + slow motion here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nADiI...

The Miracle behind the whole Experience:

-Please do not mock any beliefs or the follow story- I can just as easily turn off the option to allow comments. Please be respectful

When we first heard the news from the pilot that we were going to have to land out there my initial reaction was shock and fear. There was an incredible feeling of calm and peace with swept over all of us as we all said our own silent prayers in our heart. It was in that moment as I tried to recall any sort of ill or uneasy feeling before the flight, any kind of 'warning' feelings that I get sometimes to warn me away from when something really bad was going to happen, you know that 'inner feeling'. After I realized that I never once got a bad feeling of warning I knew in that moment that we were going to be ok. I knew that God was watching over us and protecting my family. We belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and we've been taught to listen to those feelings because they are sent from God.
As we descended there wasn't much talking, we just felt calm and peaceful, very peaceful. I fully expected a smooth landing because of that peaceful feeling, and I just KNEW we were all going to be ok- which we were. I just was really shocked when we crashed. I wouldn't have been recording had I even thought we'd crash, but all-in-all we all walked away especially my baby boy who didn't have a single scratch on him. He's the real miracle about this story.
About 1 minute after the crash a family across the street who had been out on snowmobiles immediately came to our rescue and we climbed aboard and they took us to their house to wait for the paramedics to tell us what I already knew- that we were ok and incredibly lucky.

The only Tragedy:
The pilot is a good friend of my wife's parents. He is passionate about flying and loves to take people up in his plane. My wife had never been in an airplane and this was arranged for her birthday. This was a free flight provided by the pilot because of his good heart. The tragic part of this story is that he forgot to renew his insurance on the plane, and it lapsed the night before the flight- 13 hours earlier!!! The insurance company will not honor any kind of grace period and will do nothing for him, so now he's lost a $40k plane in a matter of 13 hours.  He is still happy and cheerful despite his loss.

• Category

  News & Politics

[WinchesterRanger]

Seems like a really nice guy, but apologizing to the pilot and commiserating over the loss of his plane before you check on the baby is probably poor prioritization.

[mrdarklight]

It's kind of funny that crashing in a field without killing people is a miracle. Landing at an airport would have been a miracle. This was just luck.

[Limivorous1]

Amazing story, shame about all the religious nonsense at the end though.

[Reinier Tumbaga]

Why did

[Smartmento]

Is this real? That is freaking scary.

Isn't it odd how OK the guy filming is after the crash? And isn't the quality of the filming too good for a phone? Fake maybe?

[TOPGUNONETIME]

All that for carb ice? Stupid

[jonkenco]

Good attitude filmer

[Tim Carter]

I think 9 out of 10 people in that situation would be scooping the shit out of their pants before they thought about either the pilot or baby.

[e44h73]

you're right, but for pilots this video is brilliant to learn about mistakes all of us do in situations like this. I did also

[SnowAviation]

It's funny reading all the comments, "it was luck" or "the pilot was incompetent", etc. As you can see in the video the pilot is quite calm and even using his checklist and while we may be able to find fault in his soft field landing technique the fact is he found a suitable landing spot, arrived there, and due to poor ground conditions the aircraft nosed over. This certainly wasn't a "Crash" landing but rather a rough rollout to a normal landing on soft conditions.

[e44h73]

absolutely agree, plenty of roads there

[e44h73]

I check this video and "Plane Crash Aftermath Wreckage" too just one question to pilot - why flaps are in 0 position?