A small plane had to make a forced landing near a Langley golf course Friday after experiencing engine troubles.
The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) confirmed the plane, a Cessna 152, took off from Langley Regional Airport around 3:30 p.m. when the engine started to fail.
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Langley RCMP said the plane, which had two people on board, tried to land on the green at Newlands Golf Course but overshot the landing, and ended up in some trees south of the property near 48 Avenue.
Neither of the people on board were hurt and were able to exit the aircraft on their own, but the TSB said paramedics were on scene.
RCMP said 48 Avenue is closed between 201 Street and 214A Street because of a small leak coming from the plane.
Police added fire crews were working to contain the leak of an unknown substance.
Andrew Trip, the groundskeeper at Newlands, told Global News he saw the plane struggling before it came down and he heard the crash.
Trip, who lives on the property attached to the golf course, said he was sitting in the backyard with his wife when they heard “something off” about the engine.
“We watched it above us, and it was kind of sputtering,” he said. “So I followed it and watched it go down and crash.”
The pilot, Max Arns, is a flight instructor who was taking a student up for a lesson when the engine failure happened. He said he had no choice but to land in the trees after flying too fast to touch down on the golf course.
“There’s a bump at the end and we would have flipped over if we had hit it” after landing on the green, he said.
Arns added his main concern wasn’t the nearby power lines, but rather avoiding the taller trees in the field.
“We just had to hope for the best,” he said.
RCMP said there is no criminal investigation into the crash, and the TSB has taken over the investigation into what caused the engine failure.
—With files from Srushti Gangdev, Kristen Robinson and Julia Foy
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