When the motor cut out on SkyDive Greensburg’s main single-engine plane, the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing on the runway at the Greensburg Municipal Airport, but came up a little short.

According to SkyDive Greensburg owner Bob Dougherty, the engine lost power shortly before 11:00 a.m at approximately 7,500 feet in the air just southeast of the airport. The plane was going about its regular business as the pilot, whose name is being with held, climbed into the sky to drop of guests ready to parachute. When the engine cut out, the pilot had to make a decision. He evacuated the 14 jumpers at 5,000 feet. All of them were fortunate enough to land without incident as they touched down safely and looked up to watch the pilot of the plane attempt to maneuver his way out of the dire situation.

The pilot began to lose visibility as the engine spewed thick smoke and oil over the cockpit and windshield. The instrument panels were out and the flaps lost control, Dougherty said. The plane then “deadsticked,” or lost all manual controls, as the pilot tried to loop around the airport. Miraculously, the pilot managed to find the runway with his wheels and made a bumpy landing. However, the runway was not long enough to enable the pilot to stop the plane in time, Dougherty said. The aircraft thundered off the runway into the nearby corn field owned by Charlie Beggs. As the plane began to slow down, its nose caught the ground and flipped over, landing on its roof.

“He just ran out of runway,” Dougherty said. “But he was able to put the plane in a place where nobody would get hurt.”

The pilot was able to crawl out of the wreckage himself. When Decatur County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Snyder arrived with Deputy Josh Bushhorn, the pilot was outside the plane waiting for them, Snyder noted. Snyder, who was running the scene with help from Bushhorn, said he was happy to see no one was seriously injured.

“Everybody was pretty lucky,” Snyder said. “Something like this could’ve been a lot worse.”

Dougherty said the man was shaken up quite a bit by the incident and taken to the hospital as a precaution, but he was not injured.

“Everybody did what they were supposed to do,” Dougherty explained.

He credited the report of no injuries to the professionalism of the pilot and to the intensive training SkyDive Greensburg patrons undergo before they are allowed to skydive.

The next step, Dougherty said, will be to get the plane out of the field, but only after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a chance to conduct an investigation. The FAA was on the ground at 3 p.m. Sunday but the results of their investigation will not be immediately available, however, Snyder said the information he had from the pilot meshed with Dougherty’s.

Dougherty hopes to keep the business going with his smaller, secondary plane. Within an hour, the second plane was taking off, dropping skydivers and buzzing by the wreckage on its way back to the runway. The business ran for the rest of the day.

Dougherty said he also plans to eventually purchase a new skydiving plane as the wrecked craft is likely to be a total loss.

“It’s a loss, but 15 people walked away because everybody performed professionally,” he said.

Dougherty vowed to cooperate with the FAA and its mandatory investigation in every manner possible.

“I’m just glad it had a happy ending,” he added.