Plane dodges traffic, makes emergency landing on Swain County highway

By Andrew James

Click here for updates on this story

    SWAIN COUNTY, North Carolina (WLOS) — News 13 has new video showing the moment a single-engine plane made an emergency landing on a Swain County Highway Sunday morning, July 3, 2022.

According to the Swain County Sheriff’s Office, the plane landed on Highway 19 around 11:50 a.m. Sunday. No injuries were reported.

Pilot Vincent Fraser said he was flying with his father-in-law after looking at property he purchased near Fontana Lake.

That’s when he said the engine started to fail.

“I started going through my checklist and I was able to get the aircraft to restart and kind of fly a little bit, but she would only fly for 3 to 5 seconds, and then she would come back down and start to sink again,” he said.

With the plane dropping lower, Fraser looked for a safe place to land.

With the difficult mountainous terrain, Highway 19 was the best spot.

“By the grace of God, I looked to my left, and you couldn’t see it before because, you know, it’s just all valleys and mountains, but there’s a road — that road that I landed on just right there, perfectly lined up,” he said.

Dodging multiple lanes of traffic and power lines, Fraser made a successful emergency landing.

Fraser will fly home to Florida this week. He said he received his private pilot license last October and has just under 100 hours of flying experience.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.