Small plane makes emergency landing on busy Pennsylvania highway
A small plane made an emergency landing on a busy highway in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, on Saturday morning.
The aircraft, a 1995 Commander 114B, had landed on the eastbound lanes of Interstate 78 near mile marker 45.6 in Weisenberg Township.
Officials said two people, the pilot, a 65-year-old man from Michigan and the passenger, a 34-year-old woman from New Jersey were on the plane and are not injured.
They had left New Jersey and were in route to Indiana but had to make an emergency landing due to unknown engine problems, officials said. The pilot was trying to reach a nearby airport but couldn’t.
The incident caused heavy traffic on the highway when first responders shut down the eastbound lanes to investigate. Traffic had been detoured to I-78 Eastbound to Exit 40 (Krumsville Road) in Greenwich Township, Berks County.
The plane was towed from the scene to a local airport, officials shared.
NBC10 spoke with a witness, Bonnie Magrowski, who shared photos from the scene. She claimed she saw the pilot in the cockpit as she drove by.
Dashcam video obtained by NBC10 also shows the moment the plane landed, flying right above cars before the wheels touched the ground.
Another witness, Cordelia Winkelspecht, told NBC10 that she was driving near I-78 when she saw the plane descending.
“I was like, no, it’s a little too low,” Winkelspecht explained. “And then I was like oh my God it’s about to fly over me.”
“It was the most perfect landing,” Winkelspecht added. “Just everything about it, I was just sitting there frozen. And I just kept thinking only God could do this. This is incredible. It was insane.”
Officials said the incident is being investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration.
This plane landing comes just days after a small plane had crashed landed in a park in Northeast Philadelphia, injuring two people.
When the NBC10 Investigators looked into the make of both planes, they found that both have a Lycoming engine which reportedly have issues with the rods.
NBC10 Investigators reached out to Lycoming, a Pennsylvania-based company, last week but we have not yet heard back.
