Posted on 06/07/2015 9:46:02 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The pilot managed to land without injuries to any of the four people inside.
A small single-engine plane was forced to make an emergency landing on Highway 101 in the South Bay late Saturday — a feat its 20-year-old pilot managed without any injuries to the four people inside, the California Highway Patrol said.
Engine troubles forced the young pilot, Wyatt Grow, to attempt the landing near Coyote Creek Gulf Drive in Morgan Hill, south of San Jose, the CHP said.
Officials with Cal Fire said crews were dissipated at 11:09 p.m. The plane was towed off the road to the San Martin Airport at 12:39 a.m., the CHP said.
A 20-year-old pilot, Wyatt Grow, landed a small single-engine plane on Highway 101, near Coyote Creek Gulf Drive, in Morgan Hill, California, on the evening of June 6, 2015, the California Highway Patrol confirmed to NBC News.
Grow told NBC Bay Area the landing was an experience he'll never forget. Grow and his three friends were coming back after having dinner at Harris Ranch, which is located between San Francisco and Los Angeles just off I-5, in Coalinga, and has its own landing strip for small planes.
But Grow said that on the way back to the Bay Area, the plane lost power at 2,500 feet and he was unable to land at San Jose’s Reid-Hillview airport. “I started going through the fuel tank, started doing everything I could to get the engine back up and running, but each time we got power it would kill and die right back out.”
“My immediate thought was landing on the highway,” he said. “I saw quite a few cars passing below me. I figured cars saw me coming and stopped – thank you to those drivers.”
Grow, who has been flying since his junior year of high school, said he tried to remain as calm as possible during the landing, “even though my heart was beating quickly.” “I went on the highway just as I would on any normal runway," he said. "Once I touched down it was a huge sigh of relief.” Grow said his flight instructor had taught him how to do emergency landings.
“I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life before,” Grow said. “It was a sinking feeling … I just hoped I was getting out of it alive.”
CHP officer Lisa Brazil praised Grow’s efforts. “I think the pilot did an amazing job avoiding any power lines and traffic … I’m just happy nobody was hurt.”
As for Grow, he says Saturday’s landing is “definitely one for the books.” “I’m probably still going to remember this when I am 80 years old.”
The Federal Aviation Administration is set to investigate the cause of the engine trouble. In an apparently unrelated incident, another small plane made an emergency landing on Interstate 80 in Churchill County, Nevada.None of the passengers in that plane were injured, and the plane manged to get into the air again, the Nevada Highway Patrol said in a tweet Saturday night.
Sounds like the kid did a great job bringing it in!
Can't blame them for going there. Great place and a must stop respite on I-5 if you are traveling between LA and SF.
Best chocolate chip cookies!
Yup!
The pilot is actually the lucky one in a situation like that, since he is obviously preoccupied with getting the plane down safely. All the passengers can do is try not to crap in their pants.
Engine out at night, that is a major yikes.
Dissipated? The fire crews had been carousing overmuch?
One wonders what went wrong
Hopefully this was not the result of any cockpit errors.
.
Less than $2000 to go to end the FReepathon. Throw $5 at it.
Thanks.
Considering that it was dark... I am sure this was most likely the best option available. It is great that the kid didn’t panic and kept flying the plane.
There can be a number of reasons that for engine failure. Unfortunately, it is most likely that the pilot had a fuel management issue. Cessna’s have a fuel selector position that drains from both tanks. On a Warrior you go from one tank, then to the other and then back again. This often gets people used to driving Cessnas into difficulty when they rent a Piper. They forget and run a tank dry.
A Piper Warrior has two fuel pumps, an engine driven pump and an auxiliary electric pump. When you run a tank dry in the summer, sometimes even in the evening, and then switch to the tank that still has fuel... the two fuel pumps together add enough turbulence to the fuel flow that a vapor lock issue can develop. There is also the possibility that the tank that was switched to may have had moisture from condensation built up that prevented a quick restart.
And they cannot give the kid a ticket for going the wrong way against traffic!
I can’t get past the smell at Harris Ranch :-(. The San Martin airport is a stone’s throw from where this plane landed. I guess he just could not get that far. Thank God no one was hurt!
Dead-stick night landing procedure:
Turn on landing light.
If you don’t like what you see-
Turn off landing light.
I like that.LOL
Oh man...
Now THAT IS FUNNY!!!
Pilots, what say You?
Hope it wasn’t fuel management, or lack thereof.
A good landing is one you can walk away from; a great landing is one in which you can use the aircraft again ;-)
Most people don’t know this but planes landing on highways in emergencies have the right of way. Or so I was told. However I did do a night landing in a thunderstorm when the landing light went out on final, just as soon as I turned base to final.
He was lucky he had plenty of room to land. Other parts of the freeway can have road signs and lights in the way.
My thoughts, precisely.
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