Plane Lands Safely On The New Jersey Turnpike

A pilot hired to make traffic reports for a local radio station became the news himself when he made an emergency landing on the busy New Jersey Turnpike.

The Cessna single-engine airplane joined the morning rush hour in the most unexpected way after developing engine trouble, but landed safely, said Joe Orlando, chief of staff for the New Jersey Turnpike.

“There were no injuries, no vehicles involved. The pilot did a fantastic job,” Orlando said. “We have 600,000 to 700,000 cars on the road every day and the guy managed to find a safe enough opening to land the plane.”

The accident occurred at 06:46 am (1146 GMT) but fortunately not in the northern section of the Turnpike, near New York, where the traffic is most dense.

The pilot, who was broadcasting live traffic reports for Philadelphia radio station KYW, managed to get his crippled aircraft to the side of the road, although he still created a 1-1/2 mile (2.4 kilometer) tailback.

“He did an extraordinary job,” Orlando said. “But if I was a reporter, I’d be thinking about trying not to create the news.”

Plane Crashes Into Toilet Field

A small airplane dropping from the sky after its engine failed wound up on a cushioning bunch of portable toilets — and the pilot was able to walk away apparently unhurt.

Gary Mayor of th FAA says the Cessna 182 crashed in Washington state after taking off from Thun Field, an airfield owned by Pierce County southeast of Tacoma.

Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer says the plane was about 150 feet in the air when the engine quit.

Troyer told The News Tribune that the pilot tried to turn around to land but didn’t quite make it.

The plane hit a fence, flipped over and landed upside down on top of the portable toilets standing in a storage yard.

Authorities didn’t immediately give the pilot’s identity.