'Let's get this stopped safely': Plane crashes in shopping center parking lot

Shari Rudavsky | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Pilot sets engineless plane down nice and easy Greg Mahler's engine went out on his small plane, so he set it down near Dick's, on a back part of a lot in Traders Point.

As high winds buffeted the area Saturday, Marianne Mahler waited anxiously as her husband, Greg, flew from Washington, D.C., to Indianapolis in his six-seat Piper Lance with two friends. But Greg, an experienced flight instructor, landed safely after deciding it would be better to set down at Metropolitan Airport in Fishers than at Eagle Creek Airpark, where he usually stores his plane.

So on Sunday — when the wind had died down and the sky was a cloudless blue — Marianne Mahler had no worries when she dropped her husband at the Fishers airport to make for the 10-minute or so solo flight to the plane’s home base.

Then, as she waited at the Eagle Creek airport for him to arrive, a call came.

I’m OK. I just missed the runway by a bit.. I just crashed the plane.

Actually, Greg had landed more than 8 miles short of the airpark, skidding through a mall parking lot on the northwest side and avoiding injury to anyone, including himself.

About an hour after the crash on Sunday afternoon, Marianne Mahler tried to still her nerves as her husband walked calmly near his plane and called students to tell them what had happened.

“My heart is still racing. He’s OK,” she said. “I’m shocked that something like this would happen. … He doesn’t have a scratch on him.”

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Under other circumstances, Marianne might have been in the plane with her husband. But the plan had called for her to meet him at Eagle Creek and then take him back to their northwest-side home.

The short flight started out uneventful. But about halfway through, the plane’s engine suddenly shut off. Mahler tried unsuccessfully to restart it. He went through all of the emergency procedures. A less experienced pilot might have looked through a checklist, but not Mahler.

“I didn’t have to pull the book because I knew it from memory,” said Mahler, who has been a pilot for 30 years and a light instructor for 20.

Realizing he would have to execute a crash landing, Mahler looked down for the best site. Zionsville Road looked good at first, but then he decided there were too many cars.

He looked down again and noticed the Traders Point Shopping Center with its relatively empty parking lot and came in for the landing.

At Traders Mill Grill on the east side of the shopping center, some of the staff noticed the plane come in low, too low, over the building. Owner Ron Watson, a former pilot, later said he heard nothing as the plane glided past. Watson realized the engine had died.

“I was expecting the worst,” he said and jumped into his car to follow the plane.

But he did not realize how skilled a pilot Mahler is. Mahler hit the ground, slid through the parking lot, avoided cars and light poles, and landed in a grassy bank near Dick’s Sporting Goods.

“Let’s get this stopped safely,” he said to himself, as he did just that.

Watson ran over and helped him find his glasses in the plane.

On Sunday as emergency personnel cordoned off Mahler’s plane as they waited for it to be towed to Eagle Creek Airpark, Mahler wondered what had gone wrong with the engine, which he said he had just bought last winter.

But the seasoned instructor said he would not have done anything different in hindsight.

“This is the first time I’ve had an offsite landing,” he said. “I teach emergency landings. … I found a safe place to land away from people, buildings, and safely. This is what an offsite landing is meant to be.”

Call IndyStar staff reporter Shari Rudavsky at 317-444-6354. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky