BLACK HAWK COUNTY - Just before 8:30 p.m. Saturday, the Air Traffic Control Tower at the Waterloo Municipal Airport lost contact with a small single-engine plane trying to land. That’s when airport officials called the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office for assistance in locating the plane. The sheriff’s office, the Waterloo and Cedar Falls Fire Departments, the Iowa State Patrol, and the Janesville Police Department immediately began the search.

Officials located the plane a short time later because of a beacon flashing on the tail of the plane. It had crashed nose-down about two miles north of the airport in a soybean field near the 3100 block of West Mount Vernon Road in rural Black Hawk County.

Officials have not released the pilot’s name, but they will say he is an elderly man from the Cedar Falls area. The sheriff’s deputies say he was the only person onboard. When authorities arrived at the scene, the man was still conscious, but sheriff’s deputies say he was not very alert. Crews had to extract the man and rush him to Allen Memorial Hospital in Waterloo. Authorities say he is lucky to have survived, narrowly missing power lines but clipping some tree tops. The hospital health supervisor tells TV-9 News the pilot was “being worked on seriously” within a half-hour of the crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration will investigate the crash site sometime Sunday. The Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Department will continue to block a portion of West Mount Vernon Road until the investigation is complete.