Moment pilot is forced to land plane on packed motorway
Drivers had a narrow escape after a hair-raising emergency landing in the middle of a busy motorway.
Motorists had only seconds to react when a light aircraft suddenly began plunging towards the road near Gauramirim, Brazil, after an engine failure.
Miraculously, the pilot managed to manoeuvre the plane under overhead power lines and land on the road without anyone being killed or hurt despite a steady stream of traffic.
Two people on board the plane,a 29-year-old pilot Mateus Renan Calado and the passenger and the airplane’s owner, 71-year-old businessman Valdemiro Jose Minella, were okay after the incident, police confirmed.
The drama occurred after the plane left an aerodrome in Gauramirim in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina shortly before midday yesterday.
The single-engine Pelican 500 BR reportedly suffered engine failure above the BR-1010 in nearby Garuva and was forced to make its emergency landing on the motorway.
A woman travelling behind the aircraft could be overhead shouting on the video: ‘It’s going to come down on the top of the lorry, it’s going to crash’ as it veered to the left and then the right while it hovered above the busy dual-carriageway motorway.
The aircraft was seen shaking precariously close to the vehicles and the grass verge as the pilot tried to manoeuvre in the tricky situation.
It then lands swiftly in front of a tanker, almost touching the central reservation at high speed before steering between the moving traffic.
But, the vehicle behind the plane had to brake suddenly to avoid a crash. The driver managed to escape unscathed.
Fellow motorists could hardly believe their eyes.
The woman overheard shouting there was going to be a crash seconds earlier and the man driving the car reacted by yelling: ‘My God, how amazing! How lucky!’ as they neared the plane while it came to a halt on the hard shoulder.
It was towed away around 5pm local time yesterday before the motorway was fully re-opened. An investigation into the incident is now underway.
The aviation industry has been rocked by a spate of fatal incidents in the first months of 2025.
Last month, 12 people were killed when a small aircraft crashed into the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Honduras.
In February, two people were killed after a small plane crashed onto a busy road and collided with a bus in Sao Paulo, leaving charred aircraft parts strewn along the highway.
In the US, a single-engine aircraft crashed into a retirement home car park and burst into flames.
Two people were killed at a regional airport in Arizona in February after two small aircraft – a Cessna 172S and a Lancair 360 MK II – crashed mid-air.
While light-aircraft incidents are relatively common, there have also been several fatal commercial airline crashes this year.
In January, 67 people were killed when a passenger plane and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter collided mid-air outside Ronald Reagan Airport near Washington DC.
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