Look out below!

Sunbathers on a beach had to make a run for it when a pilot was forced to make an emergency landing in a 1930s plane.

Pilot Zac Rockey was flying over the coast in Sidmouth, Devon, making his way back from an event that marked the 100th anniversary of World War One’s end, when it suddenly became a nail-biting plane-ride from hell.

An engine on the light aircraft lost all power, explains The Telegraph. This caused the plane to lose height, and it forced Rockey and his passenger, Trudi Spiller, to look for a safe place to land.

Rockey steered the plane towards the coastline – Jacob’s Ladder Beach, it seems, was going to be his improvised landing spot.

Spiller was seen waving frantically from the aircraft window at beachgoers to clear out the way:

I was sat in the front seat. As we came around the cliffs it began to slow up, then the next thing there was a total failure and the engine cut out. I turned around and called ‘Zac’, but of course you can’t hear each other up there.

He’s looking out of the side of the plane and I started moving my arms telling people to get out of the way. I was slightly frightened. It wasn’t like my life flashed before me or anything, but I was thinking ‘here we go’.

I gave a sigh of relief as we landed and got out quickly, but afterwards I have to admit I had jelly legs.

Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the plane came out undamaged (you know, besides that one engine).

Said Rockey of the landing:

You know what – I have had better runways. It was not ideal.

I can imagine that it wasn’t, Rockey.

The plane was dismantled by the police and the coastguard, since there was no other way to remove it from the beach. Beachgoers like Emma Salter were confuzzled at the sight of the plane marooned on the coast:

When we got down to the shore, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing – our friend, who volunteers for Sidmouth lifeboat, in his tractor towing a plane.

I can only imagine how strange is must have been for people on the beach watching it land – you just wouldn’t think it was going to land.

Goodness knows we don’t want to know what would have happened if it hadn’t. *Shivers*

[source:telegraph]