Passengers escape plane crash after pilot deploys inbuilt parachute
A light plane that experienced engine trouble over Australia's Blue Mountains crash landed to safety with the help of a parachute.
The pilot of the Cirrus aircraft deployed the parachute and the plane drifted down into the front garden of a house.
ITV News reports that the three people on board escaped unharmed thanks to the inbuilt parachute.
The pilot activated the safety feature when the aircraft began suffering engine failure at around 1,300m above ground.
One witness said: "It was very surreal watching this plane drifting down very slowly towards us."
Resident Robert Ross told the Sydney Morning Herald he was watching the plane crash land from his back garden.
"I looked up and the engine started to splutter... he got it going again and then it went dead," he said.
"It then started to go into a spiral. I thought the pilot was going to eject but it all happened too quick. I started yelling out to my wife: 'There's a plane going to crash into the house.'
"I was shitting myself, then it veered off and crashed about 400 metres away."
Sydney Flying Club president Allan Bligh told the newspaper that Cirrus light planes have a handle in the cockpit, which when pulled, fires off a cover plate and deploys a parachute.
"Then the aircraft is supposed to drift slowly to the ground but it doesn't always work to that effect - weather and other things can play havoc," Mr Bligh said.
"There are a number of manufacturers who decline to use them and believe a controlled forced landing, which you are taught from your early days of flying, is a far better system than the deployment of a parachute."
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