https://abc7news.com/post/small-plane-lands-highway-85-san-jose-chp-says/15508462/(the other plane found him, must have appeared to look upside down, but wasn't, glad he got it down safely)
CUPERTINO, Calif. (KGO) -- No one was injured after a 14-foot plane made an emergency landing on a South Bay freeway Monday morning during rush hour, but it has caused significant traffic delays.
It happened on southbound Highway 85 before De Anza Boulevard just after 7 a.m.
The pilot is OK and walked out without a scratch after being able to land his plane in the opposite direction of traffic.
The landing caused a traffic nightmare for drivers in the Cupertino area, with lane closures ongoing and extending over four hours. "I started to lose my engine, made a mayday call into the Palo Alto airport, my destination," the pilot Peterson Conway said.
Conway commutes from a farm in Carmel to Palo Alto every other day but on Monday morning, something went terribly wrong.
"I left my farm in Carmel at 6 a.m. this morning, called the airport and asked them to top me off, we don't know what happened, if that did happen or it didn't but clearly I had an engine out," Conway said.
Conway says airport officials originally tried to divert him to San Jose, but he said when things became clear he wasn't going to make that, he aimed for the nearest football fields.
"I then, saw kids out in the football field I was trying to make and I couldn't make that," he said. "Northbound traffic on 85 was back-to-back and nobody would be able to see me coming down on top of them so I opted to land on the southbound lane."
He made that landing just around 7:15 a.m. Monday on Southbound Highway 85 just before De Anza Boulevard.
