Photo: Getty Images
When you think of an airplane soaring through the sky, you may picture the aircraft high in the sky flying through the clouds. A small town in South Carolina, however, got a much closer view when a mysterious low-flying plane was seen flying merely hundreds of feet above the ground.
At least four people in Landrum, located near the South Carolina/North Carolina border, claim to have seen a large white airplane flying extremely low to the ground on Tuesday (May 31), per Tryon Daily Bulletin. Two residents, Chris and Rita Cochran, say they saw the plane, which they described as looking more cargo than commercial, landing around 1:30 p.m.
"It was 200 feet high, maximum," said Cochran. "I mean, the trees are 60 feet tall, and that plane was right on them. It was no more than 200 feet."
Residents of the town have been left with more questions than answers, like why was the plane flying so low to the ground when typically aircraft soar high in the skies overhead. Jason Turner, one of the witnesses who claims to have seen the plane land at Fairview Airport around 4 p.m., said the shocking sight could be due to some malfunction that forced the plane to land.
"How low it was, looked like an emergency," he said.
An anonymous employee at Fairview Airport in Campobello said he saw the plane but that there was no emergency landing.
"There was no emergency response activity here," the employee said. "I did observe an airplane come in and land, and it went to the other end of the runway and took back off again."
Refuting witnesses' statements, the employee shared an image, seen here, taken from surveillance footage that shows a single-engine Cessna appearing on the runway at 1:19 p.m. "It's unlikely that any cargo type plane could land at this airport," he said. "It would end up crashing off the runway."
After seeing the image, witnesses said that was not the same large plane they reported seeing. The airport employee could not find record of another larger plane landing at the time.