A single-engine Piper Cherokee airplane was forced to crash land on the 91 Freeway in California after losing power about 45 minutes outside of Los Angeles. Yes, that means this was a very busy highway, practically bursting at the seams with traffic. No, amazingly nobody died, either in the plane or in a vehicle on the roadway.
The small plane clipped a Toyota pickup truck before spinning out of control, breaking apart and erupting in flames. Firefighters arrived on the scene in short order and were able to extinguish the fire and remove the wreckage.
On-scene footage from Corona Engine 3 as they arrived on scene to the plane crash on the 91 Eastbound in Corona. #PlaneCrash #91freeway #Corona #CoronaFire pic.twitter.com/a0DwwV4aOB
— Corona Fire Dept #CoronaFire (@CoronaFireDept) August 9, 2022
L.A.’s KTLA News spoke to Pilot Andrew Cho, who said, “It felt like a hard bump. Hard to describe. We were four to five feet in the air when the plane stalled completely and fell to the ground.” The Federal Aviation Administration is reportedly investigating the incident. Traffic was, not surprisingly, backed up for quite some time eastbound on the 91.
Although it’s pretty rare for small planes to crash-land onto highways, this is the second such incident recorded on video (that we know of) so far this year. In July, a Florida man was forced to land his plane on a highway in North Carolina after losing engine power.