A blimp that was supposed to fly over the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade went down in a baseball field near a school on Long Island Thursday morning.
The Manhattan Institute blimp made an emergency landing on the the field behind the Woodward Parkway School in Farmingdale at about 9:45 a.m., according to multiple witnesses on social media.
The pilot, Trevor Thompson, told NBC 4 New York that the blimp made a controlled landing because the vessel was running out of fuel and was being blown around by high winds. The blimp was supposed to land at the nearby Republic Airport.
The company that owns the blimp, AirSign, said that the blimp was scheduled to fly over the parade to promote the school and had to land when strong winds began hampering the flight of the vessel.
No one was hurt.
Several residents living nearby posted photos and videos of the blimp slowly coming down on a field in the neighborhood. One video shows the blimp coming down slowly, eventually disappearing behind a house.
There were residents gathered on the field for a 35-year ritual of neighborhood Thanksgiving football when the withering blimp overshadowed the game.
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"It was huge and close to the ground," said Tom Jones.
Tony LoFaso wondered, "Is someone gonna get hurt with this thing?"
Thompson thanked the people on the field who helped him land safely.
"They came over, and have two lines in blimp-type scenarios. they grabbed them and held me in place while I shut it down," he said.
Oddly enough, it's not the first time that a blimp has gone down in the Nassau County community. In 1994, a blimp flying over the U.S. Open crash-landed after it similarly was unable to make it back to Republic Airport.
