A young pilot is thanking her lucky stars there was someone on hand to guide her down into an emergency landing after she lost part of her landing gear during takeoff.
Chris Yates, a veteran pilot at the airport, radioed the control tower to alert them of the potential disaster, but the control tower operators had never seen it happen before and didn’t know what to do.
The tower patched Yates through to the young pilot, whose name was Taylor Hash. Hash was only on her third-ever solo flight, and the anxiety was thick in her voice.
“Taylor this is Chris, my daughter’s name is Taylor and I taught her to fly! We’re gonna be just fine kiddo,” were among the first things he said.
A student pilot, Hash was up in a Diamond Star single-engine aircraft from Oakland County International Airport, Michigan. At the time of the incident, she had 57 total flight hours.
Yates, the former director of aviation at SpaceX, managed to calm Hash down with the comment about his daughter, before beginning to instruct her on how to make an emergency landing.
Hash would have to land without a front tire, so Yates told her to keep circling the field until she felt ready to try and land the plane.
“When you touch down, I just want that stick all the way back. You’re gonna hold that stick back like you don’t want that nose to touch,” he can be heard saying over the recorded radio conversation.
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“The nose is gonna come down, you’re okay, you’re okay. Talk to me. Thatta girl, proud of you.”
WXYZ News Detroit shared another video of the landing taken by two onlookers who remarked “beautiful, beautiful,” as she managed to touch down without the nose immediately smashing into the ground.
“I was thinking of my daughter and just how afraid and alone (Hash) probably felt,” Yates told NBC News correspondent Gadi Schwartz.
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NBC News TODAY interviewed Hash who told them that “as soon as he said [thatta girl] he goes, ‘I’m proud of you,’ the waterworks came,” Hash said, with Yates revealing he too was crying.
The FAA has stated they are investigating what the cause of the malfunction was, while Hash has said that despite the frightening incident, she has no plans to give up flying.
WATCH the coverage of the story from TODAY below…