Airplane Crash Lands On California Highway, Everyone Walks Away

The old saying among pilots is that any landing is successful as long as you can walk away from it. If that’s true, then this counts as a triumph. A plane crash landed onto the very busy Freeway 91 in California near the city of Corona at around 12:31 PM local time on Tuesday, August 9. The two occupants in the aircraft didn’t suffer injuries. 

Pilot Andrew Cho said the Piper Cherokee plane suffered an engine failure, and the aircraft was losing altitude. He wasn’t able to make it to the nearest airport, so the Interstate was the next best option. Cho told KTLA the landing felt like a “hard bump,” which was an understatement judging by the dashcam video above.

After bouncing off the road, one of the wings broke off. This resulted in a spray of fuel onto the highway, and the gasoline quickly burst into flames. The plane then slid across several lanes and came to a stop against a wall in the path of an onramp.

Cho and his passenger were able to climb out of the wreckage. During the chaos, a part of the plane, possibly the wing, struck the tailgate of a Toyota Tundra. The three occupants inside the truck did not suffer any injuries.

The Federal Aviation Administration is now investigating the crash.

Making an emergency landing on a public road is rare but happens. Motor1.com covered an especially odd example in January 2022 when a plane landed on the street but came to a stop at a train crossing. The timing was really bad because a train arrived and obliterated the aircraft. The pilot was able to flee the scene before the chaos. 

In 2020, a plane made an emergency landing on a highway in Quebec, Canada. There were no injuries. The most intriguing part was that the other traffic on the road barely seemed to react to an aircraft coming down in front of them.