Pilot Loses Power, Lands in Field

After battling to fly with one failed engine, then losing the other, the pilot of a twin-engine corporate plane Monday evening performed what federal investigators called a near-perfect emergency landing in a pepper field off the Santa Ana Freeway between Irvine and Tustin.

The pilot and two passengers walked away from the turboprop Fairchild Merlin IV after it landed belly down in a field of bell peppers at 6:24 p.m., Orange County sheriff’s officials reported.

“As emergency landings go, it was very good,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Abbott.

Although the craft can carry as many as 14 passengers, investigators at the scene said only pilot Robert McLaurin and passengers Tommy Pedersen and Jeffrey Johns were aboard.

None of the men reported any injuries. The aircraft, owned by the Rancho Santa Margarita Co., sustained between $5,000 and $10,000 in damage to its propellers and fuselage, Abbott said.

The men said they had been on a routine maintenance flight between Corona and John Wayne Airport when first one engine stalled, then the other did likewise. The plane landed in the field, a piece of unincorporated county territory owned by the Irvine Co., about 200 yards north of the Santa Ana Freeway and just south of the Stor furniture store in Tustin, Abbott said.

“There was nothing to it,” said Pedersen, 26, a flight instructor from Corona. “It was just an emergency landing. We glided for a few minutes.”

Orange County Fire Department spokesman Rich Viviano said: “The right engine cut off. They thought they could make their way back (to John Wayne) on one engine. Then the left one cut off.” The maintenance flight was to be a round trip that originated at John Wayne.

Investigating officials were complimentary of the pilot’s actions.

“It looks like he did everything right,” said Sheryl Hammans, a aviation safety transportation officer for the Federal Aviation Administration. “He walked away from it.”

McLaurin, 52, of Corona, declined to comment until after he spoke with investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, who were due to arrive on the scene of the accident sometime during the night.

But as he walked away to a waiting pickup truck to a comment of “Hard day, Bob,” McLaurin responded: “It could have been worse. I’m here talking to you.”

An Irvine Co. security guard who was first on the scene and who declined to give his name, said that when the men exited the plane, McLaurin quipped: “So who do I see to pay for the peppers?”

The guard said damage to the field was minimal, however, because most of the peppers had already been picked.

Pedersen, who is originally from Norway, was reluctant to discuss the incident. He said that the craft was not flying under air-traffic control at the time of the emergency and a place to land had to be found quickly.

“We just picked the field,” Pedersen said, adding, “You have to do these things yourself.”

Emergency crews from the Orange County Fire Department and from the nearby Marine Corps Air Station at Tustin rushed to the scene. Five Marines from the Tustin base arrived in a rescue truck, wearing aluminized bunker gear. Orange County fire officials dispatched two engine crews.

There was no fire, though, and the crews remained at the scene only on a standby basis.

“There were no fuel leaks,” Viviano said at the scene. “The props are bent, but everything is pretty much intact.”

One of the Marines at the scene, Cpl. Walter Haynes, praised the pilot for steering the plane clear of a populated area. Haynes said he saw the plane going down.

“I thought it was funny that he was moving slow and out of place,” Haynes said, in reference to the plane’s drifting into restricted military airspace. “We saw him drift in and then lost him from sight.”

FAA officials said the plane’s owners planned to have it taken within a day to an undisclosed place in Santa Ana where it can be examined in closer detail.

Darkness shrouded the plane from the view of freeway motorists Monday night, so that it did not create a traffic problem, but Abbott said he expected a different situation after sunrise today.

“It’s going to be a gawkers’ block, no question about it,” Abbott said.