Mon, Jun 08, 2009
US 41 Becomes A Runway
It started out as a routine check ride, but when 30-year-old
instructor pilot Mike Davidson and his student, Mallory Zackery
smelled smoke in the cockpit of the Arrow 600 Sport (file photo,
below) they were flying, they knew there was trouble.
Davidson contacted the tower at McCollum Field, which gave them
an immediate clearance to land. They didn't make the airport.
“A heartbeat after that, the engine failed,” said
Davidson, a commercial airline pilot for JetBlue.
The two landed safely on the southbound lane of the busy
highway. Davidson said he chose the highway after looking for a
field in which to land, but didn't find anything that would workd.
After landing, he and Zackery taxied the plane into the parking lot
of an under-construction townhome complex. “There was a guy
in a pickup truck and he had the presence to slow down and stop and
the traffic behind him stopped,” Davidson told the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. The truck driver followed the plane into the
parking lot, before leaving.
Jon Hansen, owner of Hansen Air Group at McCollum Field which
owns the plane, praised Davidson’s performance. “He did
an excellent job of putting it down safely," Hansen said.
The incident drew a crowd. Cobb County, Georgia police and fire
departments responded to the call, as did the Ackworth police
department. Several passers-by stopped to take pictures of the
plane in the parking lot. Local authorities said the investigation
would be turned over the NTSB.
We're all taught early on how to constantly be looking for a
place to land our airplanes, "just in case." Most of us are
fortunate enough to never have to actually put that into practice.
A story like this one serves as a reminder that just because it
didn't happen last time doesn't mean the next time we fly, we won't
be looking for someplace like the southbound lane of US 41.
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