VIDEO: Plane crashes into fence during emergency landing in Arlington
ARLINGTON, Texas - New surveillance video captured a direct view of a single-engine Cessna plane crash in Arlington on Monday, showing the moment it takes a boomerang-like bounce off a chain link fence.
"As a matter of fact it was a madhouse here," Nizar Panjwani, the store's owner.
The employees at an Arlington Save-N-Go convenience store which sits just a few hundred yards from the open parking lot where the plane went down is feeling especially fortunate on Tuesday.
"A customer came and told me that there was a wing of a plane, I said, 'What?' So I went out and looked and sure enough it was a plane. It was like a movie. It was crazy, but luckily nobody got hurt," said Panjwani.
A pilot and passenger were onboard the plane, but they escaped with no serious injuries.
The plane belongs to an aviation school at the Grand Prairie Municipal Airport.
Arlington fire officials say the pilot reported to the tower at the airport that he had experienced engine failure and was putting the craft down.
"It could’ve been my driver coming back from his route, you know," said Omar Gonzalez.
The parking lot where the plane went down belongs to GRM Information Management, a document storage company.
Periodically, trucks are moving about in the open lot, but that was not the case when the small plane plummeted.
Gonzalez heard the loud noise, but says it was not all that unusual.
"They pass by all the time real low because the airport is right there, so I always see them come by flying pretty low, but I didn’t think anything of it," he said.
The damage to the company's fence shows where the impact occurred.
Gonzalez believes the fence acted as a barrier.
"It probably caught the plane from going farther down the road. It could’ve probably crashed into the apartment, they just built them. It could’ve went down that little creek past, but it stopped it right there," he said.
Arlington fire officials say they have not received any information on what caused the plane's engine to fail.