Port of Astoria airport operations manager Ron Larsen burns out the engine in his small plane enroute to Seattle early Monday night and brings his small plane to a controlled glide emergency landing in a farmer’s field in Willapa Valley.
Port executive director Jack Crider tells KAST that Larsen landed the plane on its belly rather than lower the wheels because of the roughness of the terrain. Larsen was in flight for about twenty minutes out of Astoria when the incident occurred. Larsen had friends on board. There were no injuries. Crider says, “if an engine was gonna blow,” he’d rather be on board with Larsen as pilot because of his thousands of hours of flight experience.
