The aircraft's wheels got caught in mud and ruts on the grass strip.
View full sizeJoe Sherboneau, left, John Bouck and Mike Hendershot talk over how to get Bouck's plane back on its wheels. Standing behind Bouck is Rob Parrott. Sherboneau, Hendershot and Parrott work for Pullen's Trucks in Weedsport, which used a tow truck to get the plane right side up. Skaneateles, NY -- An Owasco man escaped injury late this afternoon when his single-engine float plane flipped over on takeoff from a grass runway at the Skaneateles Aerodrome.
John Bouck, of 323 Deniman Cove, planned to fly the plane from Skaneateles to Cortland. He was moving the plane because the main runaway of the Skaneateles airport on Benson Road is closed for repairs.
“We were taking off and had nose wheel off the ground and the main gear hit mud and ruts and put the nose gear back on the ground,” Bouck said. “The nose gear collapsed and that was it. Very quick.”
Bouck’s wife, Connie, was watching when the plane flipped over onto its nose and came to rest upside down in the runway.
The accident happened as she was about to leave the airport and drive to Cortland to pick up her husband after he landed there.
“It was like watching slow motion” she said.
A tow truck from Pullen’s Trucks in Weedsport was used to pull the plane back over onto its wheels.
John Stith can be reached at jstith@syracuse.com or at 251-5718.