A student pilot in California got a flying lesson over the weekend that he probably won’t forget anytime soon. And it didn’t even happen while he was in the air.
A jet blast from a United Airlines Boeing 737 flipped a small Cessna 172 onto its side Saturday at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Adding insult to injury, two people were inside the plane when it happened. Luckily, both of them were unhurt.
And you thought your experiences flying were bad.
Small Plane Flipped Over By Blast From United Airlines Jet
The crazy incident occurred around 2:40 p.m. on Nov. 7 as flight instructor Jason Ryu and student pilot Kunal Gawli returned from a lesson, according to FLYING Magazine. The Cessna was pulling up to a parking area as United Airlines Flight 2611 revved its engines for takeoff.
“We had a sudden, strong airflow when we started turning left to get into the parking lot,” Ryu told CBS Los Angeles. “In that moment we completely lost control, and the airplane started to topple over.”
Video footage of the incident shows the Cessna’s tail lifting off the ground before the entire plane flips forward onto its roof. The Cessna was reportedly badly damaged.
Another pilot who witnessed the incident radioed air traffic control, saying, “We were on Bravo Mike and Bravo Mike just flipped over.”
The pilot of another C172 told the airport’s ground control that the flipped aircraft was “blasted by the United 737 jet blast.”
Gawli, the student pilot, had a fairly understandable reaction to suddenly finding himself hanging upside down inside an airplane.
“We were scared. We were definitely scared,” he said. “We were like, ‘What’s happening?’”
“It was definitely a terrifying moment, for sure,” Ryu added.
Airport Construction May Have Contributed To Incident
The Cessna’s owner, Orange County Flight Center, believes construction at John Wayne Airport may have contributed to the bizarre accident.
Niki Shetty, the flight school’s director, told CBS Los Angeles that construction work at the airport could be causing safety problems for smaller planes. Gawli said that the construction work around the parking area made it difficult to maintain proper distance from the larger jet.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed the Cessna was blown over while taxiing behind United Flight 2611. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are both investigating.
Plenty of other weird aviation incidents have happened lately.
In another terrifying incident, a Ryanair passenger recently described how he was nearly sucked out of an airplane window, and a UFO reportedly flew close to a British Airways jet over England.
Meanwhile, Ryu and Gawli just walked away from an airplane that flipped over onto its roof. All because they were looking for a parking spot.