A plane pilot avoided an apartment building and rammed into a tree. Amazingly, the plane pilot still walked away with only minor injuries.

The Wheeling plane crash occurred due to malfunctions while the pilot was trying to land it at Chicago Executive Airport.

The Wheeling plane pilot was reaching for the runway, half a mile short of the airport, when all of a sudden, the twin-engined Beechcraft Super King Air 200 was unable to make the trip and had to force the pilot to a crash landing.

"To develop a problem and then put it down on the road instead — [the Wheeling plane crash] could have been a lot worse," Airport Manager at Wheeling's Chicago Executive Airport, Dennis Rouleau, commended. "[The plane] could have been in some buildings, but he was able to put it down on the street to avoid injuries to himself and people on the ground."

Jakaila Johnson, a 11-year-old witness for the Wheeling plane crash, told The Chicago Sun Times, "Normally those planes come over the lake, and come down, but we saw it wasn't going to come down where it was supposed to. We ran inside the house and screamed, 'A plane crashed!' . . . We thought it might blow up."

Federal Aviation Administration records show that the crashed plane was built in 1981 and was registered to TennAir LLC, of Clarksville, Tennesee.

"[The Wheeling plane crash] could have been a disaster. Actually what happened was a godsend. I think we're very fortunate to have an airplane accident that was a walkaway situation. It's very fortunate that nobody was hurt - either on the ground or those in the air," commented mayor of Prospect Heights, Nick Helmer.