Given the odds, this was a hole in one.
A small, single-engine plane made an emergency landing on an 18-hole golf course in Sydney, Australia, on Aug 17, with the pilot and his trainee walking away with just minor injuries.
A video that has been seen more than 200,000 times on TikTok and shared multiple times shows the plane – a Piper Cherokee – slightly tilted to one side as it glides down.
It then lands on its belly, skids on the fairway and grinds to a stop nearly fully intact near the 15th hole.
The emergency landing happened during a training flight just after 2pm on Aug 17, with an instructor pilot and a student on board, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported.
NSW Ambulance said the pair, who are both in their 50s, were treated onsite by paramedics for minor injuries, before being taken to Royal North Shore Hospital for further assessment.
One suffered minor facial injuries.
The authorities said the cause of the crash landing was unknown at this stage, but it may have been due to possible engine trouble.
In a TikTok video, a witness said the plane “just fell out of the sky”.
Another observed: “It was crazy. We literally just heard this noise, and then all of a sudden it went bang.”
Mr Keanu Turnewitsch told ABC he was on the course waiting for a friend to take a swing, when a “nice big shadow came over the top”.
“It was dead silence. About 30 seconds later, we had a big crunching sound… then all the ambulances and everything started coming past and sirens for 20, 30 minutes,” he said. “By the time we got back around, there was an airplane on the golf course.”
Mr Callum Nicholls, who was also on the fairway, told online media outlet Manly Observer that “the plane came in really low over the top of our heads, and there was no propeller movement… It didn’t even sound like an engine was on”.
He said: “He banked around the corner here to obviously try and come down the 15th, but lost altitude coming down, skidded across and just ended up there.”
Another witness who recorded a video of the emergency landing said he saw the plane “losing altitude quite quickly”.
“Something was not right. The sound was a bit jarring, but you could see it was a pretty gentle, textbook kind of landing,” he said.
“All props to the pilot,” he added. “He managed to bring it down safely.”
Information from Flight Tracker shows the aircraft took off from Shellharbour near Wollongong and made a stop in Camden before continuing the flight north.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said it was gathering evidence about the forced landing, but it was unclear whether it would conduct a formal investigation.
Air crashesAccidentsAustraliaGolf clubs
