SPOKANE, Wash. — Over the weekend a plane made an emergency landing on Spokane's North-South corridor. Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) said it's not common to see a plane use its highway system as a make-shift runway. But this is definitely a first for the North-South corridor.
WSDOT Spokesperson Joe McHale's couldn't believe it.
"The first question is if it didn't crash, like what happened?" McHale said. "It was really incredible. I mean, the North Spokane corridor doubled as a runway."
The plane landed safely with no reported injuries to the two pilots.
We got a copy of the Washington state patrol incident report on the emergency landing. It said after interviewing the two pilots, troopers discovered that one of their two fuel tanks ran empty and they failed to switch to the full tank.
WSP called in an airplane mechanic from Deer Park to inspect the plane.
McHale said it's incredible the pilot landed between barriers that blocked off lanes to any traffic.
"To land it right in between those jersey barriers—that's really, really impressive," McHale said. "And it couldn't have been a better outcome that we had that section closed, to allow it to be a makeshift runway."
McHale said when a rare emergency like this happens, WSDOT's "incident response team" responds to the area. In this case, the team blocked both directions of the North-south corridor until the plane safely took off.
"It became a perfect runway," McHale said. "There were no contractors in the area, no one was doing work. And so it was clear for takeoff. It was quite the spectacle."
The WSP report also said the pilot instructor has a commercial rating. And he told troopers he had an upcoming job interview with a major airline. The FAA is investigating the emergency landing.
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