A small plane made an emergency landing on the sand at Huntington State Beach shortly after takeoff Monday afternoon, with the pilot and his teenage nephew walking away unhurt.
The Piper PA-28 Cherokee touched down near Magnolia Street and Pacific Coast Highway just after 2 p.m., roughly two miles south of the Huntington Beach pier. The beach was busier than usual because of the 2026 U.S. Open of Surfing.
“Cherokee 4521 Romeo, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. We’ve lost our engine,” the pilot was heard reporting to the control tower. “We’re just coming up over the shoreline, and we will be putting it down on the beach. Just in front of the stacks.”
No injuries were reported among the two people on board or the bystanders on the beach, authorities said.
Pilot Mike Bremner said his pre-flight checks and the takeoff itself were normal. He and his 16-year-old nephew, Griffin, had departed from Santa Ana’s John Wayne Airport bound for Van Nuys. About five minutes after takeoff, at roughly 1,000 feet, Bremner said something went wrong with the engine.
“When that happens, we run by memory,” Bremner said. “A very quick check to see if we can get the engine restarted. Not a lot much different than in your car. Pump the accelerator, check the ignition, switch tanks, in our case. Given that we were only at 1,000 feet, we immediately made sure the plane was flying at such a speed that it would glide the farthest.”
“When I realized that it wasn’t going to start again, I looked to my right, I saw the beach, the winds were relatively light, and we set it up for landing and we touched down,” Bremner added.
An on-board camera captured video of the emergency landing.
“I think we’re extremely fortunate,” Bremner said.
Griffin Bremner, who was visiting from Canada, described the moments leading to the landing. “He’s like, ‘Griffin, we’re going down,'” Griffin said. “The plane starts to stutter a little bit, and the propeller slows down and whatnot, and then he starts steering towards the beach.”
It was Griffin’s first time flying with his uncle.
Bremner said all pilots are trained for forced landings, but he felt incredibly grateful that he and his nephew were able to walk away and land in such a wide-open area.
“Grateful is the word for it,” Bremner said. “I mean, all pilots train for a forced landing. Every , from private right up to airline transport , you plan for an emergency landing. But you never really know what you’re going to do until it happens.”
Both said the unexpected trip to the beach would not soon be forgotten.
“I actually grabbed a rock from under the wheel to remember the incident,” Griffin said.
“That’s my nephew,” Bremner said with a laugh. “I still have to tell his father what happened today, my brother. And his mother.”
The Federal Aviation Administration will investigate what caused the engine failure.