Don’t you hate it when that happens? Mark Penell, a private pilot, had a very unfortunate experience when he decided to make the most of a beautiful spring day in May 2014 and fly his plane over Camillus, a small town located about 180 miles north of New York City.
As he was flying along, he was forced to look on helplessly as his Rans S-10 Sakota suddenly lost its engine propeller at 7,000 feet. At first, he thought that the propeller had just stopped turning and that there was an engine failure. So he attempted to restart the Rotax 582 engine – to no avail.
In that sticky situation some would have surely panicked. As you can see from the video, Mark Penell, however did nothing of the kind. Keeping his cool, he braced himself for an emergency landing and turned what had been his plane into a glider. He then succeeded in completing a normal touch down at Whitfords airfield. It was only when he got out of the aircraft that he fully realized what happened to him. And for the record, the propeller has never been found. An appeal is out - should anyone find it.
