Vintage Boeing plane ditches in Elliott Bay
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The Boeing 307 Stratoliner, one of only 10 such planes built by Boeing and the only one remaining, hit the water shortly after 1 p.m. today. Witnesses said they heard the plane's engines sputtering before it made a hard turn and then landed on the water less than 100 yards from Salty's restaurant.
Those on board were a 43-year-old man from Puyallup, a 46-year-old man from Graham, a 43-year-old man from Everett and a 60-year-old man from Seattle. They were all in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Mike Fergus, FAA spokesman, said the plane had been in the air about 30 minutes before it called Boeing Field seeking landing clearance, which was granted. On final approach, the pilot radioed a mayday. The last transmission was to announce that they expected the plane would hit the ground.
When Cooper Mills, the general manager at Salty's, saw the plane headed for his restaurant, he had immediate images of Sept. 11, he said. He yelled for everyone to evacuate the restaurant, and everyone from cooks to customers bolted for the doors.
"Basically the plan was 'Everyone run for your life!' " Mills said. "It just didn't seem it was going to be able to plop down into the water. It was just amazing."
Based on preliminary information from eyewitnesses, here's what happened in the minutes before the plane hit the water.
The plane was coming from the northeast, apparently headed toward Boeing Field, when it started losing altitude over the water.
A class of 18 divers from the Divers Institute of Technology had just gotten out of the water after a training dive when they saw the plane and heard its engines apparently failing.
As the plane continued to lose altitude, it did a hard, fishhook turn toward Salty's and then performed a controlled crash.
The divers said they all turned and ran from the oncoming plane.
After the plane hit the water, the divers saw one man and then three others climb out of the escape hatch over one wing.
The person who got out first yelled to the divers, "Four on board. We're all all right."
Diving instructor Mike Hemion said the people standing on the wing were very poised and patient.
"They were a lot calmer than I would have been," Hemion said.
Help came in the form of Coast Guard boats less than a minute after the plane hit the water, according to Petty Office Anthony Juarez.
The men on board were helped onto a 41-foot Coast Guard boat and taken to the Don Armani boat launch at Alki and escorted to waiting Seattle Fire Department paramedics, Juarez said. They were then taken to the hospital.
The plane is a vintage passenger plane owned by the Smithsonian Institution, Juarez said.
Bob McLaughlin, a wildlife observer with Project Seawolf, an Orca-study group, was in a boat at Elliott Bay Marina below Magnolia when he spotted the vintage plane circling just above the water off Bainbridge Island. It appeared that a right propeller was failing, and only one half of the landing gear was lowered.
"We knew it was in some sort of trouble," he said. "You could see the propeller wasn't developing power."
The plane was built in 1939 and was the world's first pressurized commercial airliner. It was delivered to Pan American Airways in 1940.
It was restored to original condition over a six-year period by some 30 retired Boeing workers in Seattle.
Craig O'Neil, the marketing director at the Museum of Flight, said the plane was the only airworthy 307 Stratoliner in the world. It was discovered at a flight museum in Pima, Ariz., several years ago and had been taken to Boeing Field, where it had been meticulously restored for the Smithsonian.
The plane had been showcased at the Museum of Flight alongside Boeing Field a few times in recent months, O'Neil said.
The plane was named "The Clipper Flying Cloud" by Pan American Airways.
The plane was scheduled to be the centerpiece at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the new companion facility of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum scheduled to open in Washington, D.C., in 2003.