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AP Top News - 06/01/2000 Actor Swayze OK After Crash Landing

PRESCOTT VALLEY, Ariz. (AP) -- A small plane piloted by actor Patrick Swayze made an emergency landing and clipped a wing on an empty street in central Arizona on Thursday. Swayze was not injured.

Swayze was flying a 1978 twin-engine Cessna 414A from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, N.M., when he was forced to make an emergency landing, said John Clabes, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Sgt. P.J. Janik, a spokesman for the Prescott Valley police, said the plane landed on a paved street in a housing development under construction in this town 90 miles north of Phoenix. As it landed, the plane hit a light pole and sheared off a four-foot section of its right wing, he said.

Swayze's spokeswoman Annett Wolf in Los Angeles confirmed Swayze had made an emergency landing and that he was not seriously hurt. She said Swayze has a home in northern New Mexico, but declined further comment.

Clabes said Swayze was the only person aboard the aircraft.

It was not immediately clear what forced the emergency landing, but FAA officials had been told it was a pressurization problem. The FAA lost track of Swayze's plane on radar at 13,000 feet around 11 a.m. and couldn't contact him by radio.

Swayze, 47, has starred in several movies, including ''Ghost,'' a hit that cast him alongside Demi Moore, and ''Dirty Dancing,'' the 1987 movie that made him a star.

AP-NY-06-01-00 2304EDT< 

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), June 02, 2000

Answers

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Excerpts from the police report:

"I asked him what had happened and he stated that he had been flying at 13000 feet when he experienced a pressurization problem. He stated that he made an emergency landing at what he thought was an air field."

"He said that his wife had been flying the aircraft a few weeks prior and had what she believed was a pressurization failure."

"He said that he began to receive a 'pressure bump' and hearing a loud noise in the plane. He said that he immediately descended to a lower altitude and began looking for an emergency landing site."

"I asked him if he had declared an emergency with the tower and he stated 'no'. He stated that he had an extreme amount of noise in the cockpit from the problem and could not hear the air traffic control tower."

The rest of the story involves alcohol.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), June 15, 2000.