According to E News

As Harrison Ford's vintage plane went down shortly after taking off from the Santa Monica Airport Thursday, it landed on Penmar Golf Course in a densely populated area of Los Angeles. 

And a lot of people got a glimpse of the movie star pilot's aircraft and what Christian Fry, vice president of the Santa Monica Airport Association, called his "beautifully forced landing." 

"It's not a crash," Fry tells PEOPLE. "It appears that they had some sort of engine trouble during takeoff, which happens from time to time with airplane, but when that occurs, the beauty of Santa Monica Airport is we have the golf course, which runs parallel to our main runway. So, engine trouble, he appeared to have made a turn back towards the airport and didn't have enough speed to make it to the runway, so he made a beautifully executed forced landing here at the golf course, so really just a great job by a very well-trained pilot."

Ford, 72 who is "battered, but OK," according to a Tweet from his son Ben  is an experienced pilot and has had close calls before. His six-passenger plane took a hard landing in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the summer of 2000, and he crash-landed a helicopter in October 1999 while he was practicing emergency landings with a flight instructor. 

Another eyewitness, local TV producer J. Ryan, says he knew that something was wrong when he saw the plane in the sky and took the photo, above, at 2:22 p.m. PT, about two minutes before the crash: