Retired Huerfano County Extension Service director William Hix knew he was out of gas when the engine began to sputter as he flew his Cessna toward a Florida landing strip.
The resident of Walsenburg, south of Pueblo, slowed the plane as much as possible and braced himself as the aircraft sped toward a towering oak.
“They say, ‘If you don’t like what you are looking at, close your eyes,’ ” he said Thursday in a phone interview from Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.
Hix, 68, crashed the Cessna into the tree, where the single-engine plane hung 40 feet above the ground Wednesday. Hix was hospitalized with a broken wrist and knee after crawling out of the cockpit and tumbling to the ground.
Firefighters rescued his wife, Sally, 68, and a friend, Joe Piper, 50, from the plane. The two had only minor bruises and lacerations.
Gary Force, 49, who lives near the crash site, told the Tallahassee Democrat that Hix crawled to the highway looking for help.
“I don’t know how he kept from breaking every bone in his body,” Force said.
There was little fuel left in the plane’s 50-gallon tank, the newspaper reported.
Hix and his passengers in the four-seater left his brother’s home in Naples in southwestern Florida on Wednesday, planning to refuel about 400 miles north at Tallahassee Commercial Airport. When Hix landed his single-engine Cessna Cardinal, he found there was no gas available.
Hix said he could normally fly about 750 miles on one tank. The performance data for a 1972 Cessna Cardinal 177B suggests that an unmodified aircraft should have a range of 695 statute miles.
He had filled up before leaving Naples, he said, and in his mind should have had enough gas to fly another 300 or so miles. He decided to leave Tallahassee and fly to nearby Quincy Municipal Airport and top off there.
But as he was approaching the landing strip at about 70 mph, the engine stalled.
“I worked the throttle as much as I could to keep going,” he said. “I gradually lost altitude, and fortunately we put it in a tree. I climbed out through the windshield and stepped on a branch. It looked solid, but it wasn’t.”
Hix expects to be out of the hospital by today and on his way home to Walsenburg, where he will have surgery on his knee.
His plane is totaled, he said.
“All and all, it was pretty lucky,” he said. “I have got to say, the Cessna Cardinals were built like little tanks.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
