CARLSBAD, Calif. — Dramatic video captured the moment a Cessna pilot landed his plane on Interstate-5 in Carlsbad Thursday night.
No vehicles were hit when the emergency landing took place around 7 p.m. Thursday, just south of Tamarack Avenue, but a woman who was driving on the freeway said the plane came close to hitting the roof of her car.
“Something caught my eye up in the sky. The first thing on my mind was, this airplane is way too low to the ground. When it came down, it came up over me. I threw my flashers on,” said Sedona Beasley.
Beasley said she was not sure what was going to happen next.
The 58-year-old pilot from Corvina was flying to Carlsbad from El Monte with a female passenger when he radioed in engine trouble that forced him to make an emergency landing. He touched down going with the flow of the traffic on the Southbound lanes of I-5, south of Tamarack Avenue.
“By the grace of God, it did not hit any cars,” said Beasley.
Witnesses said they were amazed at how the pilot managed to avoid drivers on one of San Diego’s busiest freeways. Small aircraft pilots are trained to turn their planes into gliders when problems arise in the air. They look for the nearest freeway or open field to make an emergency landing since they fly slower and lower than commercial planes
Beasley said the freeway landing was not even the best part of the story.
“My heart stopped when he said, ‘are you ok?’ Everyone got out fine,” she said.
The pilot and a 58-year-old female passenger in the plane were uninjured. The emergency landing will be investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.