Pilot Lands Plane On Foggy Downstate Highway
MILFORD, Ill. (STMW) -- A 76-year-old northwest suburban pilot was not injured when he safely landed his small plane on a foggy highway in eastern Illinois on Friday morning.
"He sat it down just fine,'' Illinois State Police Ashkum District Sgt. Angie Kinstner said of Terence Bolger of Palatine, who not even injured in the landing just after 8:30 a.m. on Illinois 1 in rural Iroquois County.
There was also no damage to his plane, which stopped near County Road 450N about four miles from Milford, about 50 miles south of Tinley Park and 10 miles west of the Indiana state line.
"The small, amphibious plane was forced to make an emergency landing due to rapidly increasingly bad weather, the fog,'' Kinstner said. Bolger was the only one aboard.
He landed on the highway and by the time troopers got there, he had already moved the Cub model plane, manufactured by Legend, off into a farmfield, the sergeant said. The roadway is not busy because it is such a rural area, she said.
The plane later towed to a private airstrip and the road was opened by 10:37 a.m., Kinstner said. The FAA was contacted and Bolger was not issued any citations.
"Everything ended up okay -- just a scare this morning,'' she said.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2010. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
