Safety always comes first in aviation and pilots try their level best to prevent the aircraft from any fatal crash, as it involves the loss of hundreds of precious lives and a million-dollar aircraft as well. But sometimes, saving an airplane from a crash is not as easy as it sounds, and that’s what happened on August 9th when an airplane crashed in California near the city of Corona at 12:31 PM as per the local time. The aircraft contained two people on board, specifically a pilot and a passenger, and fortunately, both of them were successful in escaping from the aircraft after it crashed and didn’t sustain any injuries.
As per the pilot, Andrew Cho, the aircraft crashed mainly following engine failure. The aircraft identified as “Piper Cherokee” started losing altitude, and by adopting the glide approach, he couldn’t make it to the nearest airport. Following the prevailing situation, the pilot finally made the aircraft crash land on a California Highway. Seeing this horrific scene, people started recording the incident from a significant distance, and the cars in the video can be seen abruptly moving away from the scene.
While talking to KTLA, Cho called the landing a “hard bump,” and we can also see from the video how vigorously the airplane landed. Following the crash landing, one of the wings detached from the fuselage. As we know, the majority of the fuel is encapsulated in the wings of the aircraft, so as soon as the wing broke off, all of the fuel from the wing came out as a result and started to diffuse on the highway. Within no time, the fuel caught fire, and the plane kept skidding down the highway until it was stopped by a giant wall.
Following this bizarre crash, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are now investigating the matter in detail to determine the details of the crash. On the other hand, when the wing of the aircraft got detached, it struck the tailgate of the nearby passing truck, a Toyota Tundra, but thankfully, none of the three passengers inside the truck got any injuries.
Although it is not unusual to crash land on the highway because some incidents of this type have happened before. In 2020, one such incident occurred on a highway in Quebec, Canada, when a plane made an emergency landing there. It was not a crash, so all the passengers, including the crew members, remained safe and sound. In other words, we should learn lessons from the history of crashes and make amendments accordingly to prevent further crashes from occurring in the future.
