Unfazed’ Fisherman Miraculously Escapes Plane Door Hurtling Towards Him

If you’re fishing on the ocean you never know what’s going to come at you—from the sky above.

An Australian fisherman looking to make his catch off the coast of New South Wales is a lucky man after narrowly missing death when a door from an airplane fell out of the sky and landed on the water just a few yards away from where he was fishing. People standing on South Broulee Beach on the morning of Friday, September 8, watched as the plane’s door fell, convinced that it was going to hit the fisherman they could see on the water.

No one knows who the fisherman may have been, but witnesses say he kept unusually calm. Twenty-two-year-old Murphy Shaw was in New South Wales from Canberra so he could take advantage of the surfing at South Broulee Beach. He said he was in a group of 10 surfers when the incident happened. A plane was flying overhead, which Shaw said was unusual for that area.

He described a “commotion in the water” and when he looked up there was a door “hurtling towards the earth.” At first, Shaw thought it was going to land on the water, but as it fell it looked like the door was going to hit the beach. Sure enough, the door hit the sand just feet away from the fisherman.

Cool as a cucumber, the fisherman “just kept fishing” without ducking or dodging, Shaw reported.

The incident was surreal, Shaw said, calling a “glitch in the Matrix,” referring to the famous film in which the characters are trapped in a computer simulation they believe is real life. “I shouldn’t be seeing that,” Shaw said.

Someone apparently retrieved the plane’s door from the beach later. According to the local town government, the door did indeed come from a private plane, but the plane made it back to Moruya airport. Both the pilot and the passenger were uninjured.

The unnamed pilot told workers at the airport that he had failed to properly latch and secure the door and he apologized for the alarm his actions caused.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said there was no need to conduct an investigation as the cause of the incident was known and it was not likely that investigation would yield any important safety lessons.