Pilot survives ‘udderly fortuitous’ plane crash after avoiding cows upon landing

CLAY COUNTY, Fla. — A pilot crash landed in Keystone Heights Wednesday morning after a malfunction with his GPS and a near-encounter with cows grazing nearby, according to a report from Florida Highway Patrol.

Action News Jax also spoke with the pilot, Dave Lahman, on-scene following the incident.

READ: Clay County Fire and Rescue responded to a downed aircraft that landed on a cow pasture

Lahman says he planned to stop briefly at Keystone Airport for more fuel on his way from Port St. Lucie when his GPS mistakenly took him to a cow pasture nearby for landing. Upon landing, Lahman says everything was going smoothly until a group of cows and donkeys blocked his landing.

“It was uneventful, I came in, it was a beautiful field, touched down, and right in front of everything, five cows and two or three donkeys ran right up in front of me,” Lahman recounted with a smirk.

That’s when Lahman says he slammed on his brakes, causing the plane to flip onto its roof. The crash report from Florida Highway Patrol also details the same sequence of events.

While Lahman says the plane is a total loss and won’t be covered by insurance, he’s just feeling lucky to walk away from the incident unharmed.

“I feel fortunate, I feel fortunate,” Lahman said. “But when you have to start making changes, abrupt changes like that, it’s not easy to do.”

Action News Jax also spoke to a local pilot on-scene, who says all things considered, it could have been much worse.

“Well we could say with the cows, you know, nobody got hurt, that was ‘udderly fortuitous,’” Mark Dykes joked with a laugh.

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