A North Carolina couple and their two dogs walked away with only minor injuries after their single-engine plane lost power and came to rest in a tree six feet off the ground.
Dustin Davis, 44, was flying his Piper PA-32 on the evening of October 7 when the engine sputtered and then quit cold at 6,000 feet. His wife, Autumn, 41, and their dogs, Sophie and Royce, were aboard for what was supposed to be a routine hop from Hickory to their beach house at Ocean Isle Beach.
What followed was a controlled descent into dark timber, a belly-first impact that stopped short of the ground, and a hard lesson about what matters when the clock runs out. The Daily Mail reported the couple’s account of the crash and the quiet aftermath.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the engine failure. No cause has been announced.
The evening started ordinary. The Davises went to church, then boarded the single-engine plane with the dogs for the roughly 40-minute flight to the coast. Dustin had owned the aircraft about six years and said it had passed its annual inspection.
He later described the start of the flight in plain terms.
"It was like any other night,"
Then the engine began to sputter. Power failed completely. At 6,000 feet, the plane was coming down at about 1,000 feet per minute, roughly six minutes of glide if nothing changed.
Davis radioed air traffic control. The nearest airport was eight miles away. He did not have the glide to make it.
With fields, houses, and timber all possible landing zones he could not fully see, Davis worked the airplane he still had. He turned left, slowed to about 84 mph, and aimed to put the belly into the canopy rather than drive the nose straight in.
Autumn asked what she could do. His answer was short.
"Baby, just pray. Just pray,"
He told her the rest was out of his hands.
"The rest of it was in God's hands,"
He also said they had no clear picture of what waited below.
"We didn't know if it was going to be a field. We didn't know if it'd be trees. We didn't know if it'd be a couple houses with no lights on, a barn,"
When the plane entered the trees, both of them thought the impact would finish it.
"When we went into the trees, we were both thinking this is it,"
It did not. Davis said they struck a tree large enough to keep the cabin off the dirt and small enough to flex with the hit.
"But we hit a tree that was just big enough to keep us from impacting the earth, and just small enough to bend with us as we made impact with the tree, and it just kind of held us like a glove."
In the dark, they could not tell how high they sat. Phone flashlights showed the wreckage about six feet off the ground. That was enough.
"Seeing that we were only six feet off the ground, I could not tell you the joy and happiness,"
They grabbed the dogs and got out.
"We got our dogs and jumped out of that plane."
Dustin came away with a black eye. Autumn had neck and back soreness. Sophie and Royce were unhurt. The plane stayed in the tree. There was no road and no airport at the site, only woods in eastern North Carolina, far from the runway they never reached.
In the weeks that followed, Davis said the scare stripped away the noise that usually fills a full calendar. Bitterness, slighted feelings, a packed schedule, even the bank balance did not cross his mind on the way down.
"What I was not thinking about when we were going down, I was not thinking about bitterness. I was not thinking about someone that's hurt my feelings. I was not thinking about a busy schedule, or a bank account, or anything like that,"
His conclusion was blunt and practical.
"So if it wasn't that big a deal when we were looking death in the face, then it's probably not that big a deal now, and we don't need to get so worked up about certain things,"
The couple’s beachside property has been valued at $780,000. Money, status, and the small grievances of ordinary life did not help them in those six minutes. A steady hand on the yoke, a prayer in the cockpit, and a tree that caught the belly did.
Investigators will sort out why the engine quit. The Davises already know what they will not waste another evening fretting over. When the power fails and the ground is coming up fast, the ledger that matters is short, faith, family, and the people and animals you refuse to leave behind.
