Kiwi pilot fights off passenger during crash landing

Picture / Herald on Sunday

Kiwi pilot Nikola Labes has described how she had to fight off a passenger as she made a miraculous crash landing on an Australian beach.

"It was crazy. I'm coming down to land and this passenger started putting his arm around me and giving me a hug. He was trying to console me," Labes told the Herald on Sunday.

"I was wriggling to get him off. I was saying, 'bugger off'!"

The 29-year-old former Dunedin woman has been praised as a hero in Darwin for landing the Barrier Air single engine Cessna 210 safely with five passengers on board after its engine cut out.

She was at 300m and approaching Darwin Airport after a sightseeing trip over Kakadu National Park, south of Darwin, last weekend when things went dramatically wrong.

"It all happened so quickly at the end of a long day flying. All of a sudden everything (engine) wasn't working. Everything just went quiet.

"I let the control tower know. The tower said to make it to the runway. The Cessna was pretty heavy with all the passengers. It didn't want to stay in the air.

"I said: 'No, I'm not going to do that'. There were houses and trees and we were sinking so fast.

"I told them I'm landing on the beach. I hooked it (plane) around and went towards the hard sand," she said.

The passengers, an Australian couple and their teenage daughter and an Australian and his Thai wife, could hear everything that was going on.

They were quiet, but the passenger sitting next to Labes had other ideas.

"It was crazy when he tried to hug me. I just had to get that plane down. I had to stay calm and collected."

She glided the plane to the hard sand. It nosed over when it got to softer sand but everyone emerged unscathed.

"It was all over very quickly. Under a minute. They (passengers) all had a big hug when they got out."

Labes has been a pilot for four years. She trained in Sydney and has been in Darwin since March.

Barrier Air operations manager Thijs Bors said Labes did a fantastic job.

"Her training and skills resulted in a textbook landing. The fact that the aircraft had minimal damage and no one was injured is a credit to Nikola."