A pilot, his passenger and fairgoers miraculously escaped injury when a small plane crashed into a Ferris wheel at the Old Bar Beach Festival in Taree, New South Wales, on Saturday.

It took rescuers more than 90 minutes to rescue two children trapped at the top of the ride. Amber Andell, 13, and her brother Jesse, 9, saw the plane approaching them, not realizing that it would hit the Ferris wheel they were riding on.

"I was looking around as we went up and I said, 'Look Jesse, there's a plane', because he likes planes.... (Then) I said, 'I think it's going to crash, hold on tight'. There was this huge bang and the cage shook - and I dropped Jesse's Woody doll," Amber told the Herald Sun.

The twin-seat Cheetah S200 took off from a nearby airstrip and within minutes crashed into the ride. Pilot Paul Cox, 54, said he did not see the Ferris wheel.

"The next thing I know, I was stopped inside the Ferris wheel, I had no idea for a few minutes and I was just hoping no one got hurt," Cox told Mirror.

With him on the plane was his son-in-law John Rowan, 32. Both men were also unhurt, but it took the rescue team three hours to remove them and the damaged plane from the Ferris wheel.

Festival organiser Fizal Meah was thankful that there were few children on the ride because it was about to rain and most of the riders alighted from the Ferris wheel five minutes earlier. Only five children were on the Ferris wheel when the accident happened.

Safety investigators are probing why the Ferris wheel was built very close to the runway's end.