• Howick and Pakuranga Times
It appears that engine problems forced Brian Williams, who piloted the Stoddard-Hamilton Glasair SH-2R plane, to make an unscheduled landing at Macleans Reserve near Macleans College.
Alex Green saw the plane shuddering in the sky moments before it landed on the reserve at about 2.45pm on Sunday.
“It was very low over the houses. I could see it was in trouble,” Mrs Green, of Eastern Beach, told the Times. “He [the pilot] must have glided in because the engine was hardly on. There were no sparks, it just kept cutting out and spluttering along. We just thought, ‘oh no, this is going to come down’.”
Beachgoers stopped and turned their heads skyward at the sound of the plane, which was en route to North Shore Airfield.
“They were all looking up and watching as it went over the trees,” says Mrs Green. “We expected there to be a bang, but there was nothing. Then, about five minutes later, you could hear all the emergency services on their way.”
“We were driving around and just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” says Ms Myers, who is a teacher at Somerville Intermediate School.
“Police and fire services were all there. There was a big crowd and they all knew something had happened. It’s not every day an aeroplane drops into your front yard.
“There were no marks on the grass at all. I guess he was lucky that he had a good distance to drop it into. It sounded like he just plopped it in.”
Another onlooker Warren Yardley, who teaches at Macleans College, drove by the school late on Sunday afternoon.
He saw large numbers of people gathering and walking across the school field but did not realise a crash had occurred.
“It was amazing, the number of people going across the college,” he says. “I thought it was a tramp or something.”
School principal Byron Bentley says disruption to students has been minimal.
“It’s way over on the reserve,” he says. “We are having no interruptions and [no] great interest [in the crash] from students. We are too busy with exams.”
