Plane Misses Calif. Airport, Lands in Vineyard

April 27--Curt Wimmer was preparing to say farewell to his single-engine airplane Friday morning. though he didn't realize when he took off from the Cloverdale Airport that his goodbye would be so abrupt.

Wimmer, 70, of Healdsburg was headed to San Francisco to meet an airplane broker who was going to arrange the sale of the Bellanca Super King, a four-seat, low-wing aircraft.

Lifting off from the Cloverdale airport at 10:30 a.m., Wimmer, a seasoned pilot with 35 years of flying experience including flight instruction for other pilots, reached 2,000 feet when the engine cut out.

"I immediately started fiddling," he said.

Wimmer turned the plane around and headed back toward the Cloverdale Airport.

"Unfortunately there was a wind coming from the north -- a heavy wind," he said. "I couldn't glide back to the runway."

He didn't panic, though. "I just felt very calm," he said.

Wimmer put the landing gear down and set his sights on the vineyards near the runway. The plane had slowed to about 40 miles per hour when the landing gear began snagging the trellises that lined the vineyard, Wimmer said.

"It slowed the plane down, so when I hit it only felt like 10 or 15 miles an hour," he said.

Wimmer turned off the electricity and climbed out.

Emergency crews from Cloverdale Fire and CalFire were on scene to attend to Wimmer, but found a man who had only minor abrasions.

"He said he was was perfectly fine," said Cloverdale firefighter Javier Lopez.

"It was less than a quarter of a mile" from the runway, said Cloverdale Capt. Roger Fletcher.

"I'm amazed," Wimmer said.

But the Heladsburg man, an insurance agent, was left shaking his head over more than his good fortune. Prior to taking off on what he expected would be his final flight, Wimmer had cancelled the insurance coverage on his plane under the assumption that the sale was imminent.

The plane, valued at approximately $60,000, now sits destroyed in a field. Wimmer said he'll see what he can get for "a salvaged airplane."

"I'm heartbroken," he said.

Wimmer called his girlfriend in San Francisco who told him "you knew you wanted to get rid of the airplane, you just didn't know you were going to get rid of it this way."

Copyright 2012 - The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, Calif.