Here is something that doesn’t happen every day, an aircraft landing on a busy public road. Yes, a small aircraft was forced to land on a busy public road and the entire incident was caught on camera from a car driving on the highway. The incident is said to have taken place on a highway close to Quebec City in Canada and it has caused quite a stir online. The incident is said to have taken place sometime last week on Highway 40 around 10:30 AM.
A tweet with the video shows that a Piper PA-28 Cherokee aircraft was approaching the highway and coming in for a landing. The pilot managed to find a space between traffic and touched down and tried his best to keep the plane moving. The plane made its landing on the middle of the three available lanes on the highway. The video also shows the highway was well populated with vehicles at the time, to the extent, one hatchback is seen tail-gating the aircraft after landing.
VIDEO HIGHWAY LANDING
A Piper PA-28 Cherokee landed safely this morning on Hwy 40 just south of Québec City Int’l Airport. A suspected mechanical issue caused the pilot to perform this forced landing. No injuries reported. pic.twitter.com/xmOMICjOJk— Tom Podolec Aviation (@TomPodolec) April 16, 2020
Once the aircraft had landed, the pilot tried its best to move out of the path of traffic by pulling on to the hard shoulder on the right as much as possible. Traffic can be seen making evasive manoeuvres to go around the wingspan of the aircraft. This was a highly dangerous and risky move by the pilot, as an aircraft is not designed to make sudden evasive manoeuvres like a car. However, luckily, no injuries were reported from the incident. It is reported that the pilot had radioed in the Quebec City fire department for permission to land the aircraft of the highway. The location of the incident was close to the Jean-Lesage International Airport.
Reports claim that the police have said the pilot had experienced a technical problem which forced the emergency landing. The plane caused minor inconvenience as within half an hour of the landing, it is said the fire department and the respective authorities were able to take the plane off the highway and into a parking lot nearby. Apparently, it is not the first time such an incident has occurred in Canada. About a year back it was reported another plane had overshot the runway, landed on a public highway, but managed to avoid hitting any of the passing vehicles. This incident occurred near Markham’s Buttonville Airport located close to Toronto.
While the pilot in the recent video looks to have done a very good job and safely landing without any further incident. The driver’s behind the aircraft tailgating and the resulting in them to make a sudden change of direction seemed quite dangerous and reckless during the incident.
