Of all the places in the world and all the streets in California, this pilot decided to land exactly on the one perpendicular to the road on which someone with a dash cam was driving at the time. Yes, this is a story about a man, a dash cam and a forced landing.
About a week ago, a Piper Cherokee made an emergency landing on an Irvine street after its engine failed. The aircraft was approaching the John Wayne Airport when the darn thing just stopped working properly.
Of course, this could’ve led to a serious accident and even loss of human lives but fortunately, the pilot had the sense to try and land on a public road, even though there was traffic on Red Hill Avenue at the time.
A part of this endeavor was also played by the fact that he was holding the stick of a Piper Cherokee, which is a small airplane by any type of measuring. Trying the same thing with an Airbus would’ve been an entirely different story and the man would’ve probably ended up being accused of terrorism if he had survived.
Such events are more frequent than you’d think as this kind of aircrafts are purposely engineered to be small, so that they can use any long piece of tarmac as a landing strip.
According to local media, the plane belongs to a flight school but we don’t know if it was being used to teach someone how to fly or not at the moment. If that was the case, we could imagine the reaction the student must’ve had, seeing his instructor having to land this way.
Anyhow, fortunately, nobody was injured and apart from a raised heartbeat, some eyebrows and the gasps of people driving on or near Red Hill Avenue, nothing was lost or damaged in the incident. We also have to point out that the man even crossed the intersection on green, something not even drivers do every time.
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