by David Miller
Miami Township, Ohio – “I knocked on the window and he was like still holding on…” Alex Salatin explained, holding out both arms stiff imitating the pilot. “He was still holding onto the controls to fly it.”
Alex was talking about the airplane pilot, only a few years older than him who put a single-engine Cessna down safely about fifty feet away from him as he was mowing the front lawn of his home in Miami Trails. “He was like, ‘Yeah, I’m good. I’m good.” Alex is a Senior at Loveland High School.
The pilot, Phillip Sullivan made the emergency landing while returning from Wadsworth, Ohio to Louisville. He was on a Pilots-N-Paws flight and had delivered puppies to the northern Ohio town that is South of Cleveland.
No one was injured.
Nick Early explains what it was like and what he did when he heard the crash from the upstairs of his home The plane ended up in his front yard. He said, “It was a pretty skilled job, him being able to land it on the street here.”
The plane was headed into John Chevalier’s front yard when a wing clipped off a driveway lamp pole and spun it around preventing any damage to his home. John said that he had already, “Fired up the grill” so he treated the young pilot along with the pilot’s father who drove up from Louisville to check on his son to a steak dinner.
You will hear from Alex, his father Ron, and their neighbors John Chevalier and Nick Early in these LOVELAND MAGAZINE TV interviews.
Ron Salatin said about his son, “What a proud moment. He did all the right things.” He said he told his son, “He should be proud of himself.”
