Landing flabbergasts eyewitnesses
'Not every day when traffic coming at you is a plane.'By LAURA STEELE
Tribune Staff Writer
 See related story and photo:Roger, 933 is clear for landing 933 landing |
ROSELAND -- Bea Tomkiewicz's afternoon took a divergent path Tuesday when an outbound plane made an emergency landing on Indiana 933, right next to her Lincoln Town Car.
"I noticed the plane was very low. I was headed south and thought it was going way too low," she said, hands clutched around a plastic Diet Coke bottle and still shaking from her close encounter hours earlier. "I saw it teeter to the right and then I knew it was going to crash."
Tomkiewicz had planned on attending a 1:40 p.m. doctor's appointment downtown, but instead spent the afternoon speaking with officials in Room 311 of the Howard Johnson Inn in Roseland about what she witnessed.
Firsthand accounts from motorists, hotel guests and restaurant patrons told how the plane miraculously found a clear path on the busy five-lane road.
Greg Frankhauser, who was driving south, watched the plane land about a half-block ahead of him.
"It's not every day when the traffic coming at you is a plane," said Frankhauser, the operations manager for Ampco System Parking.
About 10 to 15 other vehicles were going south, and six to eight others were going north. The vehicles in front of him "stopped and scattered," he said.
The plane landed with its nose pointing north with just a little bit of an angle west, he said. It wasn't in the middle of the road, but against the curb on the east side.
Frankhauser talked to the pilot and co-pilot afterward and congratulated them. The plane apparently only clipped a power line pole, which resulted in wing damage.
"He dropped it down in an area that was just full of light poles, electric poles and business," Frankhauser added.
A traffic light near the landing scene must have just changed, he guessed, "because there was a gap between the vehicles. There was an open spot," he said.
That's where the pilot landed the plane.
"They call that a good landing," said Bob McDowell, who had just pulled into Pizza King, where he had planned to eat lunch with his son, Reid. "The timing had to be just about perfect."
The plane stopped just short of Pizza King's sign, with the marquee greeting: "Welcome to Snyderville" -- a reference to the town of Roseland's two married council members.
"You don't land on an active highway and expect not to hit something," McDowell said. "Those guys should be dead."
Nancy Younkin said she saw the plane "taxi" down 933 as she watched from inside Wendy's through its large windows.
"It was amazing," she said. The pilot "did a good job."
Afterward, the passengers were calm and cool in departing the aircraft.
"It was kind of strange, because they dropped the stepladder and disembarked just like that," Frankhauser said.
Staff writer Matthew Galbraith contributed to this report.
