Learner pilot has plans to continue flying despite horror crash after plane ‘fell out of sky’

A student pilot has revealed what was going through his mind in the moments before his plane crashed and how he drove himself to hospital.

A student pilot who “fell from the sky” during his second ever flying lesson due to engine failure has said he still plans to continue flying, as he sits in a hospital bed recovering from the terrifying crash.

Jake Elven had been practising taking off and landing at The Oaks Airfield west of Sydney on Thursday when the engine failed while he and his instructor were 1500 feet in the air.

He crawled out of the plane wreckage, dusted himself off and drove himself to hospital - but not before filming the destroyed plane on his phone.

“As soon as the propeller stops turning and the plane goes dead silent...you’re watching those trees get bigger and bigger really quickly,” Mr Elven told Channel 9’s Weekend Today.

“All I kept thinking was, ‘Man, this is gonna hurt’.”

He had to help his instructor from the plane before taking himself to hospital.

Mr Elven joked that he had "used one of his nine lives" in the crash.

The 27-year-old said he tried to focus on getting the plane back to the runway while falling from the sky.

He recalls the moment the plane hit the first tree, ripping the entire back of the plane.

“I saw sunlight coming from all the wrong directions and I remember holding on and then waking up about 10, 15 minutes later going ‘holy crap, we made it’,” Mr Elven said.

The trainee pilot joked that he had been getting the “full” training package.

When Mr Elven regained consciousness about 10 minutes after the crash, he and his instructor were trapped in the flipped plane.

His instructor was still knocked out with some “pretty bad lacerations”, so Mr Elven “helped him out the best we could”, and dragged him to his wife’s car before she took him to hospital.

He then made the “insane” decision to drive himself from Camden to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown.

But not before getting a video of the wreckage, saying it was a “good story for the pub later”.

When asked if he was planning on flying again, Mr Elven said “for sure”, despite his family’s strong objections.

Mr Elven was unconscious for 10 minutes in the flipped plane.

“It’s one one in a million. S**t happens. But as - as bad as it could be, it couldn‘t have gone any better. We will have a go again and hopefully next time I crash even smoother,” Mr Elven said.

On Friday, he said the “eerie silence of floating down to the trees” is a moment he will never forget.

The pair tried to open the plane’s flaps at the last minute to give them a bit more airtime but they were caught in a side draft which made their landing even more complicated.

“It ended up stalling the plane and putting it on its side and it just fell out of the sky,” he told 10 News.

“Last thing I remember was hitting the first big tree, the back of the plane smashing that and then I remember the back of the plane coming up and over and sunlight coming from all the wrong angles.

“We cleared about 100m of trees out of the way before we hit the last big one that stopped us.”

He also revealed what was going through his head as he plane went down.

“I’m just thinking, Aircraft Investigations, I’m going to be next up,” he said.