WICHITA, Kan. (KAKE) -- Christian Dell and Nicole Klusener say they're thankful to be alive as a pilot's greatest fear came to life.
The Andover teens crashed a private plane onto Tallgrass Country Club after the aircraft's engine gave out Friday afternoon.."We were just coming back from a Spring break trip in Nashville," Dell said.
Dell and Klusener were getting close to their landing point at Jabara Airport when something went horribly wrong.
"We've got an engine failure," Dell called into the Wichita tower. "We're trying to make it to final."
The rental plane's engine gave out as the couple was making their decent.
"I was just like, looking at Christian hoping that he knew what to do and I was praying to God," Klusener said.
"At that point it's all kind of flashback to training," Dell said.
Dell says he flew the four-seat plane right over the top of some houses lining the 14th hole of the golf course; then they clipped a tree before crashing into the ground.
"We're being told this is a small private aircraft the landed on the golf course, there are several occupants, looks like they were getting out of the plane, but injured," a 911 dispatcher scratched over the radio.
Dell says if it hadn't been for a sand trap they would have landed fairly smoothly, but instead they crashed hard. Both smashed their heads against the dash leaving them concussed and the rest of the story very foggy.
"He got out and was walking around, had blood coming out of his eyes," Klusener said.
Now that both are out of the hospital and have had time to reflect, the couple realizes how close they came to losing it all while Dell did everything he could to prevent the emergency landing from harming others.
"It's fortunate that no one else got hurt," he said.
"He did his job and that's how we're alive right now," Klusener said.
Dell says his two years of flying experience helped him keep calm during a frightening ordeal. They are still waiting for the results of the ongoing FAA investigation as to what went wrong with the rental plane's engine.
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