A man stretched out on the sand in northern Germany had a lucky escape when a light aircraft came in to land almost right on top of him. Video footage obtained by German tabloid newspaper Bild showed the small plane, a Piper PA-28-181 Archer II, coming in to land on the airstrip at Dune – a touristic islet off Heligoland. The pilot descended towards the airstrip, but got increasingly close to the white sands – and the man lying face down beneath him. "I was watching the planes come into land," said Rainer Schmidt, 52, who shot the video. "I had seen five planes land before this one came in. I instantly realised that this one was coming in to land far too low. "The others were at least six metres high. It was so close to the man on the beach. The man was very lucky."
