PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — An off-duty Philadelphia police officer remains hospitalized nearly a week after a small plane made an emergency landing in the city’s Torresdale section.
Daniel Eckert spoke from Jefferson Hospital as he was moved out of the intensive care unit, beginning what he described as a long recovery.
“The one thing I want to stress: this was not a crash,” Eckert said.
The emergency landing happened during one of Eckert’s final training flights. He was aboard a small aircraft with a flight instructor when the plane lost power. The instructor was able to bring the aircraft down without injuring anyone on the ground.
“We’re 2,300 pounds of metal with 40 gallons of fuel, and we’re falling. All I see is houses,” Eckert said.
Eckert said the preflight check and takeoff were normal. The plane had been heading back to practice additional takeoffs and landings when the engine suddenly failed.
“I said to my instructor, ‘John, I just lost my engine,'” Eckert recalled.
The instructor, John Aytch, took control of the aircraft. Eckert said air traffic control advised there was a runway available at Northeast Philadelphia Airport, but the plane wasn’t going to make it.
“They declared they’re having engine trouble, they just had to land off the field,” an air traffic control transmission said.
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Eckert said his instructor had little time to make critical decisions.
“He had 90 seconds to get down from where we were. Every decision he made, he had less than a second to make,” Eckert said.
After the landing, Eckert said firefighters had to cut him out of the aircraft because he was trapped. He has since undergone two surgeries and is recovering from a shattered tibia and fibula, a broken forearm, a skull fracture, and multiple cuts and bruises.
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“I don’t know what the outlook will be and when I can fly again. But I will be able to, and that’s the important part,” Eckert said.
Once he is physically able, Eckert said he plans to finish his flight training and eventually work as a pilot.
Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board continue to investigate what led to the engine failure and emergency landing.
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