"And so are all our staff and our club members. He's very much one of the team around here. It's a bit of a rough day for us but nobody is seriously hurt."
Mr Small praised the actions of the pilot saying he witnessed the end of the accident, which happened at low speed, as he was arriving for work.
"I was driving along the street coming into the airport and I just thought this is not going to be a good day for somebody. But the very last little bit of it, he handled superbly well."
He said the pilot had been well trained to cope with such incidents and proved it today.
Mr Small said the club had released hundreds of students to their first solo flights since 1933 and incidents such as this were rare.
"We've had very few issues. There is extensive damage to the aircraft but the main point is the pilot walked away."
He said the two-seat trainer Tecnam, one of the latest generation carbon fibre aircraft built in Italy, was only a year old and the club had never experienced problems with it before.
No-one else was in the plane at the time and there was no-one in the parked Cessna, which was positioned to the side of the airstrip.
It was unclear how much the damage would cost.
Mr Small was unsure how high the Tecnam was when it got into trouble but said the Civil Aviation Authority would now investigate the incident.
The pilot was taken to Waikato Hospital by ambulance as a precaution.
