'Amazing' Video: Plane Forced to Make Emergency Landing on Busy Highway, Narrowly Avoids Catastrophe
A pilot flying a single-engine aircraft made an emergency landing on Sunday morning on a highway in North Carolina.
Vincent Fraser was flying with his father-in-law when the airplane’s engine began to fail, according to WLOS-TV.
“I would go through my checklist and I was able to get the aircraft to restart and kind of fly a little bit, but she would only fly for about three to five seconds, and then she would come back down and start to sink again,” Fraser said.
Thinking quick, Fraser headed towards a highway to make an emergency landing.
“By the grace of God, I looked to my left, and you couldn’t see it before because, you know, it’s just all valleys and mountains, but there’s a road … just right there, perfectly lined up,” he said.
Footage from a GoPro camera showed the skillful landing from the perspective of the cockpit.
The Swain County Sheriff’s Office shared the video on its Facebook page, with Sheriff Curtis Cochran calling it “AMAZING.”
The footage showed Fraser dodging power lines and carefully avoiding incoming vehicles as he maneuvered the aircraft to a standstill with no incident.
“What an OUTSTANDING job and no injuries,” Cochran wrote in the Facebook post. “There were so many things that could have been catastrophic but they didn’t happen.”
“We have had plane crashes in Swain prior to this but I don’t remember an emergency landing ever happening,” Cochran wrote in another Facebook post.
“This pilot did an outstanding job not only landing safely on a busy 4 lane on a holiday weekend but he kept his composure and safely guided the plane off the 4 lane to a safe spot that did not interfere with traffic,” the sheriff said.
Not only were there no injuries, but the plane was intact and was able to take off from a stretch of highway after it was towed by a truck, videos shared by the sheriff’s office showed.
Fraser headed back to his home in Florida this week, WLOS reported.
He received his private pilot’s license in October and has logged about 100 flight hours, according to the station.
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