Posted on 09/04/2003 6:31:36 AM PDT by xp38
BUCKHORN -- An American pilot who landed his plane on a busy highway near Peterborough yesterday didn't know he was in Canada, a witness said. "I saw the plane coming down as I was driving around the corner, so I just stopped," said 18-year-old Ryan Madill, who was driving a truck on Peterborough County Rd. 36 at 11 a.m. when a single-engine Cessna sliced through a telephone pole and crashed into a ditch.
"After I went and opened the door of the airplane (and) he said, 'Where am I? Am I in the U.S?' "
EVERYONE LUCKY
Although the telephone pole smashed into Madill's windshield and another truck, driven by 79-year-old Ed Sheney of Bobcaygeon, swerved into the woods beside the highway to avoid hitting the plane, nobody was seriously hurt in the accident, OPP said.
"Everyone was fortunate. It's amazing," OPP Sgt. Gord Magee said at the scene. "All we got was a smashed windshield and a truck that ended up in the rhubarb."
While Magee said he couldn't release the pilot's name, a search using the aircraft's registration number revealed the plane belongs to Harold Hawley, who lives in Barker, N.Y., near Buffalo.
Peterborough Regional Health Centre confirmed that Hawley, 52, had been admitted to emergency and was later taken to St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.
Hawley told police he believed he was over Pennsylvania when his 27-year-old plane ran out of fuel.
He said he had left from an airport in Rhode Island at 6:30 a.m. and was headed to Akron, N.Y..
"Somewhere, somehow, like Bugs Bunny, he missed a turn at Albuquerque," OPP spokesman Const. Bob LaFreniere said. "He certainly flew off his path."
A spokesman for Hydro One said power was knocked out for about 1,260 customers when the plane hit the hydro pole. It was restored within a few hours.
Transport Canada is investigating.
"We'll see if there were safety deficiencies with the plane or if there was pilot error," said agency spokesman Julie Iannetta.
...in WWII a German flying the then new hot FW190 fighter (the brits were desperate to get there hands on one) did this and landed in England thinking it was France
Great quote! Hehe. Al-buh-koi-kee.
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