Plane Hit by Vehicle After Emergency Landing on Highway

A small plane was hit by a vehicle after an emergency landing on a North Carolina highway on Wednesday night.

The single-engine plane put out a distress call at around 8:00 p.m. local time on Wednesday to Piedmont Triad International Airport after experiencing a mechanical failure, Greensboro police said in a news release.

The plane had to make an emergency landing on Interstate 840 at the junction with Interstate 73. After the plane stopped, a car hit it and one of the two people on the plane was injured, police said. The victim was hospitalized with a minor injury, according to the cops. The driver of the car was not injured in the accident.

A little before 9:00 p.m. local time, Greensboro police said on social media that all westbound lanes along Interstate 840 were closed. Newsweek reached out to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol asking if any of the westbound lanes have reopened as of Thursday morning but did not get an immediate response.

Greensboro police and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the incident. Newsweek reached out to the Greensboro Police Department, which referred to its news release, and the NTSB for comment on Thursday morning.

Local CBS-affiliated television station WBTV posted photos of the plane on the highway on its Instagram account on Thursday morning.

Another Emergency Landing

In a similar recent incident, a small plane had to make an emergency landing on a South Carolina highway in May.

A single-engine Diamond DA40 landed on U.S. Route 501 in Carolina Forest “after the pilot reported engine issues,” the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told Newsweek at the time.

The plane took off from Myrtle Beach International Airport and made its way to the Wilmington, North Carolina, area before turning around, according to Flight Aware, a flight-tracking website. The plane landed on the highway on its way back to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

The plane was operated by LIFT Training Academy, a commercial flight school with locations in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, as well as Indianapolis, Indiana and Galveston, Texas.

Jon Austin, a LIFT Academy spokesperson, told local news outlet WMBF—an NBC affiliate—that a “training aircraft experienced an in-flight event that resulted in an emergency landing” during a maintenance flight.

“The pilot and mechanic aboard executed their checklist and safely landed without injury to anyone or damage to the aircraft,” Austin said. “The aircraft was taken back to the airport in coordination with first responders and all of our other operations remain unaffected at this time.”

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.