Police Help Pilot Make Emergency Landing

An emergency night landing amid brush and rocks at the Chatsworth Reservoir wasn’t pretty for the pilot and passenger of a small plane. But it could have been a lot worse had it not been for an alert police helicopter crew.

“I knew [the reservoir] isn’t a pretty sight when you see it in the daylight,” said officer Paul Holmen of the LAPD’s Air Support division, which helped the failing single-engine Cessna 172 land safely by illuminating the ground. “It is extremely dark in there.”

The two adult males--a student and a flight instructor who was piloting the craft at the time--were not hurt in the Thursday night landing, Holmen said. The plane still sat amid the vegetation Friday night.

Holmen and his partner were patrolling over Winnetka Avenue and Vanowen Street about 6:30 p.m. when they picked up a distress call between the pilot and the Van Nuys Airport tower.

The pilot said the craft had developed engine trouble and could not make it to the airport and that he would attempt an emergency landing at the west San Fernando Valley reservoir.

“I thought it could potentially be disastrous,” Holmen said. “He could damage the plane or flip it.”

The abandoned reservoir is a fenced property with an eight-foot-wide service dirt road that divides the rocky and overgrown terrain, Holmen said.

Holmen said he rushed to the area to help by shining the chopper’s bright spotlight on the path. The pilot picked up on what Holmen was trying to do.

“They [people in plane] saved their lives,” Holmen said, but “it’s a nice feeling that you potentially helped.”