OXFORD – The 44-year-old student pilot from Waterville who narrowly escaped serious injury when his plane overshot Oxford County Regional Airport’s runway and landed upside down in a swamp Tuesday said he’s not sure when he will be up in the air again.

“That I have to think about,” said Jaroslav Suchanek in a telephone interview from his hospital bed at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston on Wednesday.

Suchanek, a student pilot with about 35 hours of training under his wing, was on a training flight in a 1975 single-engine Cessna 172 from Norridgewock to Oxford when his flight came to a sudden halt in the swampy brush at the end of the 3,000-foot-long asphalt runway.

Suchanek, who was expecting to be released from the hospital Wednesday, said he doesn’t have any memory of the crash, but does recall coming into the airport and knowing he was in trouble.

“I was coming too high. All of sudden I was just kind of like bouncing around in the air and lost control,” he said.

It was Suchanek’s first landing at the Oxford airport off Route 26 behind Oxford Homes and Oxford Plains Speedway. Had it been successful, Suchanek said his flight would have then taken him to Augusta before returning to Norridgewock, where he normally flies from.

Two investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration arrived at the crash site Wednesday morning and spent several hours looking over the scene and plane before “releasing” it to airport authorities for salvage shortly before 10 a.m. At that point the airport was officially reopened.

Facilities manager Bob Betz said the release means the aircraft can be removed by crane from the crash site. Once that is done later this week, the aircraft will be housed at the airport until the FAA investigators return for a final inspection.

“There’s no determination for cause yet,” Betz said. That will not occur until the inspectors return to interview the pilot and look at the interior of the plane, particularly its flight controls.

Suchanek moved to Maine from the Czech Republic about 10 years ago after being offered a job as a technician in a tanning company in Hartland by a man he met while living in Hong Kong.

He said he took up flying because it was fun.

“I just like it. It’s exciting,” said Suchanek, before hesitating and adding with a slight chuckle, “It wasn’t too exciting last night.”

Suchanek said he still has to pass a written test and log 50 to 55 hours before he is issued a full pilot’s license.

The plane’s owner, Kenneth Morgan, said Tuesday that Suchanek had been taking lessons from him for the past six months with no problems.

“It could have been much worse. I’m doing OK,” Suchanek said in reflection.

Betz said the airport sees an average of three planes a day landing.

A half-dozen local planes are housed at the hangar. The majority of the airport’s business is in plane refurbishing or painting, he said.

It was the first crash airport officials or local law enforcement could remember in about 10 years.