Watch: Plane Makes Daring Landing on Minnesota Highway, Collides with Vehicle
A single-engine plane made an emergency landing Wednesday night on a Minnesota freeway and collided with one vehicle, but miraculously no one was injured in the incident.
Video footage from the Minnesota Department of Transportation shows a Bellanca Viking plane making an emergency landing on Interstate 35W at around 9:15 p.m. and crashing into an SUV.
“We’re glad no one was injured and are impressed by the pilot’s effort to #zippermerge from above!” The MnDOT tweeted.
ICYMI: A plane landed on 35W last night. (Yes, really!)
While this isn’t *quite* what we mean by a “multimodal transportation system,” we’re glad no one was injured and are impressed by the pilot’s effort to #zippermerge from above! pic.twitter.com/imPdiQ1wMX
— Minnesota Department of Transportation (@MnDOT) December 3, 2020
Brittany Yurik was the driver of the SUV, which was totaled, but she and the pilot, as well as his passenger, walked away uninjured, WCCO-TV reported.
“I saw [the plane] coming at me probably one second before we collided,” she told WCCO.
The pilot has been identified as 52-year-old Craig Gifford, a Minneapolis resident and competitive aerobatic pilot.
“I talked to [Gifford] last night. He’s very kind. He was very apologetic,” Yurik said.
“He explained to me what happened, and I just can’t believe we’re all OK. I think he was feeling the same thing.”
Experimental Aircraft Association spokesman Dick Knapinski told The Associated Press that Gifford represented the United States on the Unlimited Aerobatic Team in an international competition in 2017 and 2019.
“Craig has been flying general aviation aircraft his entire life and has over 4,500 hours in dozens of different types of aircraft,” according to the International Aerobatic Club.
Knapinski explained to the AP that “pilots are trained to deal with emergency engine problems” and that training combined with Gifford’s experience in aerobatics helped him pull off a “textbook emergency landing.”
Itasca, Illinois, resident Janell Harwell witnessed the emergency landing while she was driving home after visiting a friend.
“As I got closer and closer I realized that it was an airplane that actually crashed into a vehicle, and I slammed on my brakes with both feet, and stopped in time, thank God,” she told WCCO.
“When I called 911 and she goes, ‘I’m sorry, you said what?’ I said, ‘An airplane has crashed into a vehicle on the highway.’ And she said, ‘Ma’am an airplane?’ And I said, ‘Yes!’”
After Harwell found Yurik safe but shaken, she went to check on the pilot who eventually emerged from the plane with his passenger, unscathed.
“He said, ‘Yeah, we got up in the air and my engines just failed, my engine completely failed on me, and I had to go down wherever it was safest to go down.’ Tried so hard not to hit the woman in the SUV. … [T]hat was his main thing, trying to avoid a car. And so when he hit her he was pretty distraught because he just didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Harwell said.
“[T]he bottom of his plane was destroyed, the front was pretty destroyed, the SUV I’m sure is totaled. And to think that three people walked away from that without a scratch on them is just … someone was sitting on their shoulder last night.”
The incident is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation and Safety Board.
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