Two planes make emergency stop on Canadian highways
Digital Reporter
Monday, April 23, 2018, 8:48 AM - Talk about a weird coincidence. On the same day, two planes and two emergency landings on busy Canadian highways in different parts of the country. Both of the small planes, one in British Columbia and the other in Quebec, were able to land safely on Sunday with favourable weather conditions on their side.
PLANE 1- COQUIHALLA HIGHWAY NEAR MERRIT, B.C.
According to a CBC report, B.C.'s Ministry of Transportation said a small aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing south of Merritt on the Coquihalla Highway due to a "mechanical failure" on Sunday.
Luckily, the pilot was able to land the plane safely, driving onto the highway's median and "out of harm's way," says CBC.
Ryan Manseau was making the trek from Kamloops to Vancouver at the time of the landing, capturing this photo of the plane and police cars surrounding it.
"We were passed by a couple police cars just in Merrit," Manseau told the Vancouver Sun. "And then, about 10 minutes south of Merritt, we saw them again, parked next to an airplane."
PLANE 2- HIGHWAY 5 NEAR CHELSEA, QUEBEC
In a similar situation, another small plane was forced to land on Highway 5 in western Quebec around 4 p.m. on Sunday. According to the Sûreté du Québec, the plane was seen on a northbound stretch of the highway, about 15 km northwest of downtown Ottawa.
The Chelsea Fire Department told Radio-Canada that the pilot decided to land because he feared his plane's motor was about to fail.
Fortunately, in both cases, no injuries were reported.
FAVOURABLE WEATHER ASSISTS IN THE LANDINGS
WATCH BELOW: SUNDAY'S SATELLITE IMAGERY
"In both scenarios, it looks like weather was not a problem as we saw just clouds in the sky at the time in B.C.," says Weather Network meteorologist Erin Wenckstern.
And Sunday featured beautiful spring weather from Ontario through to Atlantic Canada, so there was really no clouds or any active weather to contend with in Quebec either.
"If you think about it, it was just last weekend that we had the huge ice storm in eastern Canada, so that would've been much worse if these airplanes had to land in such dangerous conditions," adds Wenckstern.
