Left Wing of Mooney Takes A Serious Hit

There's Good Luck, Bad Luck and NO Luck At All... as recently proven by a Mooney that was forced to execute a deadstick landing on an East Bound lane of Florida's Interstate 75, Wednesday morning.

A twitter post by FHP summed up the tragedy... "A small airplane made an emergency landing on EB I75 (?? Alley) @ 40 mm. Once landed, a pickup truck collided with the left wing of the plane. Thankfully no injuries. The EB right lane of I75 remains closed at this time."

An engine failure downed the M20R Mooney over Broward County. The 2007 M20R Ovation 3 GX, N120GX, had two persons on board and executed a safe emergency landing on the right side of the road with no known damage as it came to a stop.

Whew... right? All's well that ends well... until some idiot with a truck comes along...

Shortly afterwards, a black pickup truck and trailer was seen on eyewitness video (see screen grab, below, just before impact) heading toward the aircraft, in the right lane, and attempted to pass the aircraft at what appeared to be a considerable rate of speed and hit the Mooney so hard that the aircraft was spun around 180 degrees, forced off the side of the road, and has serious damage visible to the left trailing edge of the wing... though the airframe may have been twisted beyond repair by the force of impact.

The FAA ASIAS entry only notes that the aircraft, "AIRCRAFT LOST ENGINE POWER AND MADE A FORCED LANDING ON THE INTERSTATE, EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, FL."

It is unknown, as yet, what charges the obviously errant driver will face... but from the looks of things, it could be considerable... and good luck explaining this one to the insurance company...

FMI: www.ntsb.gov