CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A pilot is sharing the frightening moments when the engine in her plane stopped mid-air, and the plane crashed in a wooded area near a neighborhood.
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Chloe Veal told Channel 2′s Tom Jones she and her co-pilot are blessed to be alive.
“We were not supposed to walk away from that,” she said.
That’s what Veal keeps thinking when she looks at pictures of the wreckage of her Piper Cherokee plane that crashed recently. As the plane went down Veal says she had one thought thinking “This is it. We thought it was it when we lost the engine.”
Veal and her co-pilot were flying into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Oct. 10 around 10 p.m. that night. They were about 12 miles out.
“We could see the runway. We had the airport in sight,” she recalled.
That’s when she says the engine died. Veal says air traffic control told them to find a highway or well-lit road to land. They didn’t see any.
“The only lights we saw were well-lit neighborhoods. We made a deliberate decision to not land in any neighborhood,” Veal said.
They wanted to avoid hurting anyone on the ground. They pointed the aircraft to a wooded area in Clayton County near Tara Beach Lane.
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As the plane went down Veal recalls her co-pilot telling her the end was near.
“This is it friend...this is it,” she recalled her co-pilot saying. “And I’m like I do not want to die. Do not close your eyes. I never closed my eyes.”
Their plane hit trees and crashed to the ground. After realizing they survived Veal still feared the worst.
“The minute we landed and I got her up I was like we got to move because I don’t want the plane to blow up,” Veal said.
They got out. It took a while, but first responders eventually arrived to rescue them. Veal suffered a broken arm, a broken foot, a broken nose, and other cuts and bruises. Her co-pilot suffered minor injuries.
Veal says she is blessed to be alive and plans to fly again.
“I can’t wait for my arm to be okay so I can fly. If I don’t fly what else would I do? I’m a pilot,” she stated.
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Veal says the FAA is investigating, trying to determine what happened.
Police initially reported the plane ran out of fuel. Veal says that’s not true. She says she had plenty of fuel and last fueled up in Destin.
Click here to help with a GoFundMe account set up to help Veal with her medical expenses.
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