Fire-truck-yellowThe pilot and his wife escaped injury when a small plane crashed Tuesday evening near the Northeast Iowa Regional Airport in Charles City.

The Floyd County Sheriff’s Department says a single-engine Piper PA-24, flown by David Priebe of Sumner, was flying from Minnesota shortly before 7 o’clock Tuesday night when the engine lost power at 6,500 feet.

Priebe attempted to navigate the plane into the airport but overshot the landing and the plane came to rest in the ditch on the south side of U.S. Highway 18. The plane had structural damage.

Priebe and his wife, who was a passenger in the plane, were not injured.

(Reporting by Bob Fisher, KRIB, Mason City)