The pilot of a personal aircraft is being lauded as outstanding after he managed to make an emergency landing on Highway 74 in North Carolina, in the western part of the state.
The video was released by the Swain County Sheriff‘s office, which said that there were no injuries as a result of this unusual incident.
“This is the view from the pilot’s GoPro camera from the cockpit of the plane on the emergency landing on Hwy. 74 on Sunday July 3, 2022,” wrote Sheriff Curtis Cochrane on Facebook. “What an OUTSTANDING job and no injuries. AMAZING If you look closely at 0:20 you will see the power lines the pilot was able to avoid. There were so many things that could have been catastrophic but they didn’t happen.”
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Indeed, the video shot on a GoPro that was affixed to the plane shows a number of harrowing moments in which the airplane narrowly avoids crashing with one of the several vehicles on the highway. Luckily, thanks to the quick thinking of the drivers and the skill of the pilot, all contact is avoided, and the plane manages to even avoid the wires over the highway. In the end, the plane manages to steer mostly off the road.
Pilot Vincent Fraser told ABC 13 News that he was forced to make the landing because the engine started failing when he was in the air.
“I started going 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 3 to 5 seconds, and then she would come back down and start to sink again,” he told the outlet.
Fraser was out flying with his father-in-law, looking at property that he had recently purchased, when the problems arose. Fortunately, he was able to fly back to his home in Florida.
Further videos on the Swain County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page appear to show the plane later taking off from the highway. Rather than dismantling it and towing away the apparently undamaged plane, the sheriff’s office looks to have simply shut the highway down to allow the pilot to take off.