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The 72 year old actor was reportedly piloting the single-engine aircraft at the time of the crash.
Actor Harrison Ford sustained serious injuries Thursday after a vintage plane he was piloting crash-landed on a golf course in California.
Ford, 72, suffered cuts to his head after the single-engine aircraft hit the ground and was transported to a nearby hospital, NBC News reports. Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott told CBS Los Angeles that the small plane crashed at 2:24 p.m., local time.
“There was blood all over his face … Two very fine doctors were treating him, taking good care of him,” said Howard Tabe, an employee at the Penmar Golf Course, located near the Santa Monica airport. “I helped put a blanket under his hip.”
Patrick Jones, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said at a televised news conference Thursday evening that the pilot had reported a loss of engine power and attempted to return to the runway. “It appears that he clipped the top of a tree and came to a rest on the golf course,” he added.
One eyewitness, Carlos Gomez, told CNN he heard the crash and saw the rescue as people playing golf tried to pull a man out of the plane. “I was like ‘Good, he was alive,” he said.
A fire department official said the pilot left the scene “alert and conscious” after suffering “moderate trauma.” A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department told People that Ford, a longtime pilot, was in stable condition.
Ford’s son, chef Ben Ford, wrote on Twitter that his father was “Battered, but ok!”
The Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB are coordinating an investigation.
“This pilot is an experienced pilot,” Jones told reporters, “and the airplane is obviously a vintage airplane, its a simpler airplane, so it’s got its own idiosyncrasies, whatever they are.”
