Crashed Plane That Nearly Killed Harrison Ford Has Found A New Home

Harrison Ford as Han Solo in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
(Image credit: (Lucasfilm))

Harrison Ford may be known for playing Han Solo, the pilot of the Millenium Falcon, one of the most iconic fictional vehicles in movie history, but the actor himself doesn’t have the best track record with flying his own planes. The 77-year-old infamously crashed his WWII-era plane into a golf course back in 2015. The same PT-22 trainer plane is now the newest attraction in an airline museum in Kansas City.

The Airline History Museum has purchased Harrison Ford’s wrecked plane and plans to restore it to its former glory as part of a kids aviation group project. The Ryan PT-22 Recruit that was built in 1942 is currently on display at the Kansas City museum during normal business hours.

The president of the museum, Jon Roper, told KMBC News that he’s been attempting to buy the plane for years due to the “fantastic job” Harrison Ford did landing it back in 2015 when it suffered a malfunction and Ford attempted to land it at the Santa Monica Airport. Ford had to settle for crashing it onto a golf course in Venice, California when he lost control of the vehicle.

Roper is hoping Harrison Ford will someday visit the museum, which is located at the Kansas City Downtown Airport, once his former plane has been worked on. The museum president said this:

He knows that we got it, but I’m going to let him respond because I do know, you know, he’s had some rough times with the history of the airplane. But we hope he does. We hope he gets involved.

Other than his 2015 incident, Harrison Ford plane incidents date back to 1999 when he was forced to make an emergency landing in a dry riverbed in California with his flight instructor. No one was hurt, but the helicopter was severely damaged. Another plane situation happened in 2017, when he mistakenly landed his single-engine Aviat Husky on a taxiway in John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California. Following the recent mishap, Ford was ordered to complete awareness training in order to keep his license.

Harrison Ford is coming off of a huge year after joining the Secret Life of Pets franchise, coming back for a cameo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and starring in the adaptation of the novel The Call of the Wild. He’ll next return to his role as Indiana Jones in the James Mangold directed film, which is set to hit theaters in summer 2022.

Indiana Jones 5 was initially set to be directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s David Koepp, but the recent shakeup will have the director of Logan and Ford v. Ferrari behind Harrison Ford’s long-awaited homecoming to the archeologist. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more movie updates.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.