A pilot was taken to the hospital after his plane went off the runway and crashed at an airport in Wayne County Monday afternoon.
It happened just after noon at the Cherry Ridge Airport outside of Honesdale.
The name of the pilot was not immediately released.
State police say the pilot's injuries are not considered life-threatening.
He was the only one on-board the plane at the time of the crash.
Troopers say the plane was coming from the Lehigh Valley (Allentown/Bethlehem area) and investigators think the pilot my have overshot the runway.
The plane ended-up upside-down in a swamp at the end of the runway at the Cherry Ridge Airport.
Eyewitnesses say the man was coming in for a landing just after noon when they knew something was about to go wrong.
"It seemed as though he was going faster. We heard the brakes and the wheels and him braking twice and then we heard the crash at the end of the airport," eyewitness Kathy Merring said.
Kathy Merring and her family were having a Memorial Day meal at the airport just a couple hundred feet away.
Her son-in-law is in the towing business. He had his truck nearby and immediately jumped into action.
"He knew what was at the end of this airport because he flies too so he just put his boots on because he didn't know whether he was going to have to go in to save someone," Merring said.
Right after the crash, fellow pilots looked on as emergency crews first stabilized the single-engine Cessna plane and then started to bring it out of the swampy water.
John Fox believes the pilot didn't have room to completely stop because he landed with the wind.
Pilots say that is the wrong thing to do.
"You should never land with the wind, always into the wind because you want your ground speed slower when you land. If you land with the wind, your ground speed is faster," pilot John Fox of Prompton said.
The pilot was able to walk away from the wreckage on his own.
The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) will now be looking into what happened and why.
"The FAA has been notified. We're waiting for their arrival out here to finish the investigation," Wayne County EMA Director Steve Price said.
The Wayne County EMA Director says now that the plane is out of the water it will be kept in a secure location until the FAA investigation is complete.
As for the pilot, eyewitnesses say he only suffered some leg injuries but was taken to Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton as a precaution.
Source: http://www.pahomepage.com