Pilot makes 'remarkable' emergency landing on NSW beach
A vintage plane avoided campers and a nearby golf course to make a stunning emergency landing on a NSW beach on Sunday morning.
Charlotte Zeederberg was flying alongside two other vintage planes when her her 1942 Tiger Moth experienced engine issues and she was forced to land on Blacksmiths Beach near Newcastle.
Wayne Franklin, who towed the plane off the beach, said it was “remarkable” the plane had made a safe landing.
“There’s no damage to the plane, it’s incredible,” he said.
“She ran into trouble over Redhead Bluff, the plane started splattering. We thought she’d be panicked, but she was fine. There’s heaps of campers on the beach, so she was worried about them.”
Ms Zeederberg has been a pilot for 12 years and is a Tiger Moth enthusiast along with her husband Ben, who owns the plane.
She and two other Tiger Moth pilots left Luskintyre Airfield near Maitland about 11am on Sunday, before the emergency landing at 11.30am.
Ms Zeederberg told the ABC she looked for the hardest section of sand and desperately tried to avoid a fatality when she heard the plane start to falter.
"[The plane] was coughing, coughing coughing all the way down," Ms Zeederberg said. "I found a hard piece of sand, well the hardest I could find, and brought her down slowly."
"[I'm] very happy now that I'm on the ground," she said.
Police visited the beach after the landing and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau were notified.