Plane’s Door Flies Off, Lands On Golf Course
The door from an American Airlines plane flew off and landed on a golf course, reports ABC News. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the plane’s huge doors that requires quite a bit of heft to lift and open. Instead, the small panel door that fell onto a golf course in Mount Holly, North Carolina, was about 15 inches wide.
Golfers at the Green Meadows Golf Course got the surprise of a lifetime when American Airlines Flight 1910 lost the small panel. The flight was en route from Dallas/Fort Worth to Charlotte when the door came off right before landing. The spot where it landed was near hole seven on the golf course.
No one was hurt on Wednesday when the door panel crashed down and landed on the greens. It was approximately 8:20 a.m. when Brian Francis was golfing and the small panel door crashed down on the golf course, missing the golfers who were hitting the links early in the morning. Francis believes that he and his golf partners were only 600 feet or so away from the area where the plane’s door landed at Green Meadows Golf Course.
Golfers saw the object falling from the sky, but thankfully it missed landing on anyone who could’ve been in harm’s way.
“It was flying right over top of our heads,” one golfer remarked.
FORE!! American Airlines door fell off during flight landing near golfers on the green http://t.co/ar1xPiayTD pic.twitter.com/0AaRrwUpze
— WPEC CBS12 News (@CBS12) August 20, 2015
The Federal Aviation Administration received a call from a golfer who reported that the panel door had come off the flight after dislodging from the plane prior to landing at Charlotte Douglas Airport. It was a door that usually covers an area that is not pressurized — a hydraulic servicing area.
Reps from American Airlines also told the FAA about the plane door. Those who witnessed the door falling reported it was twisting around in circles prior to landing. Although it sounds dramatic to have a plane door fly off en route during a flight, officials say that it didn’t endanger those on the plane, nor did it represent a risk to the flight.
The risk to those on the ground was apparent, since it’s well known that objects flying out of the sky from high heights at high speeds can represent quite a danger.
As reported by the Inquisitr, another story that went viral was when a drone reportedly hit a plane’s wing, but that turned out to be a hoax video created by an intrepid video editor.
[Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]
