CADEN HAYNOR / NEWS EDITOR

When they left the ground at Oceanside Municipal Airport on Tuesday morning, Pilot Victor Schneider and his daughter Jennifer,  a flight attendant, were unaware that they would be on a San Diego beach just 15 minutes later. After experiencing an engine failure 800 feet above San Diego, Schneider found a long stretch of Mission Beach to safely land his small private plane on. 

After the emergency landing, the passengers and plane emerged unharmed. Photo courtesy of @nbcsandiego/Instagram

The 1953 Cessna aircraft landed near San Luis Obispo Place, located just five miles from USD. 

USD  senior  Luke   Pittock, who lives just a few blocks from that street, reacted to the plane emergency landing close to his house.

“I’m ecstatic that he picked the beach to land instead of my house,” Pittock said. “I sure wish I could land a plane on the beach… It’s pretty crazy that happened and luckily no one was hurt.”

Schneider headed for the shoreline, knowing that landing on soft sand would flip the plane over, allowing them to smoothly land on the wet sand. Despite missing the San Diego International Airport, Schneider,  a  commercial  airline pilot, and Jennifer, a flight attendant, were unharmed and the plane reported no damages following the abrupt landing. 

USD senior Griffin Gard, who lives  on     Mission  Beach,    talked   about   the    beach   as   a    runway  option.

“It   makes    sense  that     you   would try and land on  Mission   Beach  if    you’re    flying   over  the   area because  it’s   on   a   really   long stretch of  straight  land  and it’s hard to find that   anywhere else,” Gard said.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which tracks reportable aviation incidents, almost 1,000 general aviation accidents have already  occurred in the U.S. this year,  with thousands  more  minor incidents  happening that fall  below  the  NTSB’s   threshold. Almost 80% of these crashes have been small private aircrafts, especially single-engine   models,   like  the    Cessna 170B   that    landed   on    Mission Beach.

Gard commented on the number of plane crashes recently.

“Yeah that’s scary,” Gard remarked. “I don’t like it. Because people gotta learn how to fly their planes and not fly into my stuff.”

In the San Diego area alone, there have been multiple aviation accidents in 2025. These include the Cessna Citation II crash into the Murphy Canyon neighborhood in May and the Marine Corps helicopter crash in the Imperial Gables desert area in October, both claiming fatalities. 

Despite these recent plane crashes, commercial air travel remains one of the safest modes of transportation. This recent increase in plane crashes is attributed mostly to general aviation — small private planes — which continue to be remodeled for safer travel.

Pilot Victor Schneider landed a Cessna 170 aircraft on Mission Beach on Oct. 21. Photo courtesy of @kusinews/Instagram