Ripped from the scenes of the latest Bond movie, former Walmart CEO Bill Simon, piloting a small plane over Fayetteville, was forced to pop the aircraft's emergency parachute, to slow its landing, as a severe loss of oil pressure sent the plane plunging. No one was severely injured, but as the following clip shows, while things could have been a lot worse, the parachute-slowed plane still took a beating upon 'landing'.
A small plane piloted by former Walmart CEO Bill Simon made an emergency landing on Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard Tuesday morning (Nov. 3), near Fayetteville High School and the University of Arkansas.
The plane started having oil pressure issues immediately after take off from Bentonville Municipal Airport at 9:35 a.m., Stout said. They attempted to land at Drake Field in Fayetteville, but after a severe loss of oil pressure, they popped the emergency parachute and made a slow landing. The plane was on its way to Waco, Texas. Simon is an adjunct professor at Baylor University in Waco.
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The plane is a fixed-wing, single-engine Cirrus SR22T aircraft that is registered to WG Aviation LLC. out of Rogers. WG Aviation LLC. is registered to an address that is listed as belonging to Bill Simon. The plane's airworthiness date is listed as July 2014, according to the Federal Aviation Administration registry.
According to FlightAware, the plane reached an altitude of 9,800 feet at about 9:45 a.m. when it started a steady decent before dropping nearly 9,000 feet at about 250 miles per hour within 30 seconds. At about 9:50 a.m. the plane deployed its parachute at about 2,200 feet and then floated down to the ground.
Caught on tape - the parachuted plane-landing...
But still the plane too a serious beating...
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Aside from Simon, also on board were co-pilot Cliff Slinkard and passenger Maurice Willis, according to Fayetteville Sergeant Craig Stout. All three were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, along with Shakemia Harris, a pickup truck driver who was hit by the plane as it came down, police said. Harris sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to police.
