Talk about a close call… and some excellent landing skills!
We couldn’t believe this dash-cam video when we saw it. Released earlier this week, it shows a plane making a dramatic landing on a busy street in southern California.
The Cessna 172 suddenly looms overhead before making a flawless emergency landing in the middle of the road, narrowly missing the many cars and electricity cables. It even manages to come to a halt before a set of traffic lights at the end of the road.
Even more amazingly, it was later revealed that the person at the controls was actually a student pilot.
The action took place just before 5pm last Friday, June 1, in Huntington Beach, a city southeast of Los Angeles. According to Flying magazine, the plane had taken off from nearby John Wayne Airport and was returning to the field when it lost engine power. The female student pilot then placed a distress call to the airport tower.
But no jokes about ‘women drivers’, please! The student pilot was super-cool in a crisis and, as Huntington Beach police chief Robert Handy later tweeted, she did an “amazing job” in getting back to earth safely.Nobody was injured in the incident and zero damage was caused.
The FAA is investigating the cause of the loss of engine power.