Pilot Craig Gifford had planned for a routine flying session for his single-engine plane earlier this week, but he didn’t plan to land on Minnesota’s 35W freeway. Unfortunately, that’s where he ended up, but on the bright side, nobody was injured. Traffic cam footage of the incident shows the small Bellanca Viking plane narrowly missing two vehicles before sideswiping an SUV as the aircraft skidded to a stop.
There still is no definite reason for the cause of this emergency landing, but as you can see in the footage above, one of the plane’s wings hits the rear of an SUV driven by Brittany Yurik. Gifford is trained as a competitive aerobatic pilot, and even represented the U.S. in international competitions.
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Craig has been flying general aviation aircraft his entire life and has over 4500 hours in dozens of different types of aircraft. Pilots are trained to deal with emergency engine problems and things like that if you have to make an emergency landing,” Knapinski told AP, “and so the combination of that training and certainly (Gifford’s) aerobatic training really paid off in this situation,” said the International Aerobatic Club.
