When Kandy Davis began filming her husband landing at Northwest Regional Airport in Roanoke, Texas, on Saturday morning, she expected to capture his plane making a smooth descent. But less than 10 seconds into her video, the sound of a gasp accompanies the shocking footage she captured: the 2005 Cessna Skyhawk crashes into a black SUV driving on the airport’s perimeter road. The small plane’s wheels slam into the roof of the car, propelling it nose-first into the ground and sending the aircraft skidding off the runway until it comes to a stop in the grass.
The collision, which occurred around 10:50 a.m. about 30 miles north of Fort Worth, nearly ripped the roof off the 2008 Volvo and sent debris — including the plane’s landing gear — flying, but it left pilot William Davis unharmed. The couple inside the car, Frank and Heather Laudo, sustained non-life-threatening injuries and received treatment at a hospital, NBC DFW reported.
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“I saw it about a second before it hit us. I was opening my mouth to go, ‘Duck!'” Frank Laudo, who lives in Flower Mound, 10 miles east of the airport, told NBC DFW. “The next thing you know, there’s shattering.” It was quite a shocking event for Davis’ first-ever solo landing.
After the crash, airport manager Glen Hyde ran out to survey the damage. The Laudos were stunned by what had just hit their car, but Hyde put it bluntly: “That is the landing gear,” Hyde said, according to WFAA. “You got hit by a plane.” Heather Laudo compared the impact to a bird hunting its prey. “It was kind of like a hawk with its talons coming up and scooping the car,” she told NBC DFW. “And the talons breaking off.”
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, which is the fourth of its kind at the airport in less than two months. NBC DFW reported that two men were killed after taking off from Northwest Regional Airport when their plane smashed into nearby woods on Sept. 23. On Oct. 6, a Southlake family died when their aircraft crashed near Terrell, about 75 miles from the airport. Five days later, a pilot sustained minor cuts and bruises when his plane lost power, flipped and crashed in a pasture shortly after takeoff.