Flier in Distress Lands on the Beach

HUNTINGTON BEACH — A pilot in distress landed his single-engine propeller plane on the waterline of the main beach Tuesday morning as surfers and joggers stared in amazement.

“He ran out of room and ideas at the same time,” Huntington Beach Police Lt. Dan Johnson said of pilot Tom West, but amateur aviators who gathered at the scene later in the morning marveled at the adept landing that left pilot and plane unscathed.

West said the Cessna 152 II lost oil pressure and its engine began to seize up as he followed the Orange County coastline south toward Montgomery Airport in San Diego after taking off from Long Beach’s airfield.

The 30-year-old pilot, who is a flight instructor, thought for a moment of heading inland six miles for an emergency landing at John Wayne Airport, but second thoughts about his engine persuaded him to land on the packed sand of Surf City.

“If I fell short of the airport, I was going to go down in a residential area or at least a more crowded area, so I figured the beach was best,” said a sheepish West, who was surprised at the reporters and television cameras that quickly descended at the side of the impromptu landing near Beach Boulevard.

Bodysurfer Tom Levers was walking toward the water when he caught a glimpse of something “coming down at a weird angle” out of the sky. He was shocked when he realized he was watching a plane coasting in.

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“There was no sound at all, nothing,” Levers told reporters, adding that the plane touched down right at the water’s edge, with waves lapping at the landing gear as West brought the craft in with a few bounces and skids.

West was en route to San Diego to pick up medical specimens to be ferried back to local hospitals, but the ice chests that he uses to store the perishable cargo were empty when his plane sputtered out.

“It’s not a far trip, but planes are faster than going through all the traffic on the way down,” West said of his job.

Huntington Beach police officers and bystanders helped West push the disabled plane up the sand to a parking lot, where it awaited inspection by federal aviation officials.