"I thought rats were eating through the ceiling," said a Whakatu man whose house was hit by a flying object yesterday afternoon.

Night shift worker George Cunningham said today that he woke around 5pm to discover a fist-like hole in his lounge ceiling.



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George Cunningham

But he quickly realised something more dramatic than rats had attacked his house when his eyes caught sight of a small rectangular metal object lying on the floor just metres away.

Suffering from deafness, Mr Cunningham had not heard the object hit his house.

He called Hastings police, and when Sergeant Ray Kirby arrived it was quickly deduced that the part must have come from the air, possibly a plane passing overhead.

A matching hole in the roof and a small impact point on a rug were the other signs of damage in what could have been a serious incident.

"It must have been a hell of a powerful hit," Mr Cunningham said, adding that "anyone standing here would probably have been killed".

Fortunately his wife was out at the time.

Hastings Senior Sergeant Ross Smith said they tracked down the aircraft, which they believed the object was from, and the pilot immediately executed an emergency landing in Palmerston North.

"It was a small plane that had left Napier and was on its way to Wellington.

"We managed to track down what kind of plane it was and notified the pilot, who then did an emergency landing at Palmerston Airport," Mr Smith said.

Hawke's Bay Aviation CEO Wattie Solomon was called by police to investigate the part, however, he believed it was not from an aircraft.

"It's not something I've ever seen," Mr Solomon said.

"It's made of cast iron and very little, if anything, is made out of cast iron on a plane."

He also said plane parts have identification numbers which the "old, rusty" object did not have.

Mr Solomon was unsure what the object was off, but said it looked like a weight from a hedge trimming Machine.

Although he was confident the part was not from an aeroplane, an aeronautical engineer from Civil Aviation, in Wellington, was brought to Hawke's Bay to look at it.

Civil Aviation spokesperson Bill Sommer said the engineer, who has had more than 20 years in the business, also believed it was not from an aircraft.

He said the emergency landing in Palmerston North was in fact a "precautionary landing".

"Once the plane was checked, and nothing was missing from it, it was on its way again," Mr Sommer said.