Thread: Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford Reported Fair After Plane Crash
By Andrew Blankstein and Hasani Gittens 8 minutes ago



The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending an investigator.

An avid flyer of both planes and helicopters, Ford was in a bad crash of a Bell chopper in 1999 Santa Clara, California. In 2008, he told National Geographic, "Well, there was a mechanical failure while we were practicing power recovery autorotations. It was more or http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscm...60-360.JPGless a hard landing. Luckily, I was with another aviation professional and neither of us was hurt — and both of us are still flying."

Actor Harrison Ford was injured Thursday when a vintage World War II training plane he was piloting crash landed on a Mar Vista, California, golf course.

The actor, who was conscious and breathing when rescue crews reached him, was stabilized and taken to a hospital, where he was in fair to moderate condition, authorities said. Sources said he sustained cuts to his head. There was no word on other injuries or what caused the plane to crash. It appeared he was flying solo.

Howard Tabe, an employee at Penmar Golf Course, said, "There was blood all over his face. ... Two very fine doctors were treating him, taking good care of him. I helped put a blanket under his hip."

The plane crashed on the eighth tee at the golf course just west of the airport shortly after takeoff from the Santa Monica Airport, according to Ian Gregor of the Federal Aviation Administration, NBC Los Angeles reported.

LAFD ✔ @LAFD

*UPDATE: 1233 Rose Ave* 1 small aircraft down on Penmar Golf Course near the Santa Monica airport. Solo occupant, an adult male being transported...

5:02 PM - 5 Mar 2015

Doctor helping downed pilot is shocked to find Harrison Ford
Justin Pritchard, Associated Press - Friday, March 6, 2015

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dr. Sanjay Khurana was close to finishing a golf game when a vintage plane clipped a tree and "dropped like a rock" onto the next hole's green. He rushed to the crash, finding a pilot bleeding from a deep gash in his head.

When the surgeon got a closer look, he was stunned to see the pilot was Harrison Ford, the actor he grew up watching in the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" movie franchises. "I'm a child of the '80s," Khurana said Friday. "I'm a big fan."

One of Hollywood's pre-eminent stars, who is also an experienced pilot, crash-landed his World War II-era plane Thursday, but he was conscious and able to talk when witnesses pulled him from the wreckage.

Soon after Ford took off from Santa Monica Municipal Airport near Los Angeles, he radioed that the single engine of his 1942 Ryan Aeronautical ST3KR stopped working and he was going to make an immediate return. Ford, who received his pilot's license in the 1990s, glided his plane onto a fairway near the airport in what aviation experts characterized as a skillful landing given a total loss of power above a densely populated area.

Ford's publicist, Ina Treciokas, said the actor's injuries were "not life-threatening, and he is expected to make a full recovery." Ford's son Ben tweeted Thursday from the hospital: "Dad is ok. Battered, but ok! He is every bit the man you would think he is. He is an incredibly strong man."

No one on the ground was hurt.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators hoped to speak to Ford but had not done so as of Friday morning. "We definitely want to know what he knows," investigator Patrick Jones told reporters.

Safety board experts will look at the airplane's engine, flight controls and records, Jones said. A final determination of what happened will take about a year. What was immediately clear to fellow pilots is that Ford did a remarkable job guiding his crippled plane away from homes and, without enough altitude to reach the airport, onto the golf course's relatively flat ground. "I would say that this is an absolutely beautifully executed — what we would call — a forced or emergency landing," said Christian Fry of the Santa Monica Airport Association.

Ford is not the only Hollywood heavyweight at Santa Monica's airport, which sits amid million-dollar homes near the Pacific Ocean.

A studio executive who pilots his own aircraft and said he saw Ford's flight described the landing as remarkable. "He made the correct turn that the plane was designed for with an engine out," Relativity Media CEO Ryan Kavanaugh told The Hollywood Reporter. "Ninety-nine percent of pilots would have turned around to go back to the runway and would have crashed."

The fact that a spinal surgeon was playing a round of golf after a morning operation gave the crash-landing its own movie-like quality. Khurana didn't realize the actor who played Han Solo and Indiana Jones was at the plane's controls until Ford lay about 10 yards from the plane. Fellow golfers who rushed to the pilot's aid helped remove him from the open cockpit, fearing leaking fuel might ignite.

After hitting a tree, the plane "kind of spun a little bit and belly-flopped" with such force it felt like a small earthquake, Khurana said. He estimated it fell "like a rock" about 100 feet. After dropping his clubs and rushing about 50 yards to the plane, Khurana found a bloodied pilot groaning, complaining of pain below his waist and "trying to get a sense of where he was and what had happened."

It took several golfers to hoist Ford away from the wreckage, Khurana said. "My initial fear was this was going to be one of those very serious, very tragic injuries right away. Fortunately, he was remarkably intact," Khurana said. As the doctor checked Ford's breathing, circulation and other vitals, Khurana's optimism grew. Then he realized he was treating the man who brought to life heroic characters of his youth.

It didn't take long for paramedics to arrive and for Khurana to reflect on what had happened. "I don't think I would have ever imagined waking up that morning, that after an early day of surgery, I'd see an airplane crash," he said. "It's a very odd scenario. But I'm glad I could have been of help."

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/H...lf-6118488.php

Too soon ??

The internet is having waaay too much fun with this

Han Solo All Fine Here