Plane makes emergency landing in Ashe County, officials say

ASHE COUNTY, N.C. — A small plane made an emergency landing Friday morning after experiencing engine problems, according to officials.

The crash happened around 9:10 a.m. on Greensboro Road in the Shatley Springs area of the county.

https://twitter.com/wsoctv/status/665202094438277120

Channel 9 first broke the news on Twitter and immediately sent out a breaking news alert.

Highway Patrol confirmed to Channel 9 responded to a plane crash on Dog Creek Road. The Cirrus SR22 aircraft landed in a field about an eighth of a mile from the end of the runway at Ashe County Airport in Jefferson, North Carolina.

The Ashe County sheriff told Channel 9 that the plane landed in a field on Dog Creek Road and the pilot and passenger onboard are OK.

Neil Renfroe and pilot Rishi Nagrani were in the Cirrus Sr-22 when the engine quit.

"I would like to have put the plane down with a dead stick so we could fly that thing out of here once we fixed the engine," Nagrani said. "But the engine was out and we weren't going to make the field."

"All of a sudden, he was like 'We got to pull the chute,'" Renfroe said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the pilot reported engine problems and deployed the aircraft's parachute before landing.

The flight departed from DeKalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta and was headed to Lancaster Airport in Pennsylvania.

Channel 9 reporter Dave Faherty is at the scene and got video of the wind flipping the plane over after it landed into a nearby creek.

• Click play to see video of strong winds flipping the plane over

The two men didn't see that happen but shared what they said to each other earlier, seconds after the safe landing.

"This is a direct quote. I said to him, 'You're going to see your son. He's about to have a son in the next couple of days and we're going to make it,'" Nagrani said.

"When I got out of the plane, I screamed at the top of my lungs," Renfroe said. "And then we hug each other."

https://twitter.com/FahertyWSOC9/status/665209779426451456

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