Hero Pilot Pans Landing
A pilot being hailed as a hero says an emergency landing he made "wasn't one of my better ones," even though the landing in a Florida neighborhood killed no one on board or on the ground, and avoided all houses and cars.
Charles Riggs was at the controls of a World War II-era cargo plane that had just taken off from a Fort Lauderdale airport Monday when one of the engines began leaking oil profusely, and failed.
From Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, he
The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm Wednesday, "We had to do something, you know, to try and stay up."Riggs says he quickly decided to try to set the plane down on 56th Street, rather than Commercial Avenue, a busy highway that was loaded with cars: "It was a less populated highway or road, and we went for it."
Bush trees along the road helped cushion the plane, he explained: "It's one of the things you study when you're a pilot, and they absorb the shock."
Then, despite the plane's wide wingspan, Riggs lined it up with the road "and I guess inertia helped, maybe God as well. We stayed pretty much dead center."
But, he says, it was "not one of my better landings."
He was pulled from the wreckage just before it caught fire, and says he was dazed, but not unconscious.
His co-pilot and a passenger were injured, and Riggs hurt his knee.