Hair-raising moment light aircraft is forced to make emergency landing on busy motorway

By NATALIA PENZA

Published: 16:31, 6 April 2025 | Updated: 16:46, 6 April 2025

This is the heart-stopping moment a plane makes an emergency landing on a Brazilian motorway between cars and lorries after suffering engine failure.

Motorists travelling behind the light aircraft as they filmed it coming down panicked fearing it was going to hit the vehicles it was nearing and crash.

But the pilot demonstrated his skill in a tricky situation by manoeuvring it under overhead power lines so it touched down safely on the tarmac without anyone being killed or even injured.

Police said afterwards two people had been on board and confirmed they were okay, naming the pilot as 29-year-old Mateus Renan Calado and the passenger as the airplane's owner, 71-year-old businessman Valdemiro Jose Minella.

The drama occurred after the plane left an aerodrome in Gauramirim in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina shortly before midday yesterday.

The single-engine Pelican 500 BR reportedly suffered engine failure above the BR-1010 in nearby Garuva and was forced to make its emergency landing on the packed highway as emergency response vehicles raced to the scene.

A female passenger in a car travelling behind the aircraft could be overhead shouting: 'It's going to come down on the top of the lorry, it's going to crash' as it veered to the left and then the right while it hovered above the busy dual-carriageway motorway.

At one point it looked as if it was going to land on a grass verge beside the busy road, before coming down just in front of a tanker and appearing to come dangerously close to hitting the central reservation as it crossed lanes on the tarmac and then finding a safer position between traffic.

Motorists travelling behind the light aircraft as they filmed it coming down panicked fearing it was going to hit the vehicles it was nearing and crash

Police said afterwards two people had been on board and confirmed they were okay

The drama occurred after the plane left an aerodrome in Gauramirim in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina

The vehicle it came down in front of had to break sharply to avoid a collision but its driver also survived unscathed.

The woman overheard shouting there was going to be a crash seconds earlier and the man driving the car reacted by yelling: 'My God, how amazing! How lucky!' as they neared the plane while it came to a halt on the hard shoulder.

It was towed away around 5pm local time yesterday before the motorway was fully re-opened.

An investigation into the incident is now underway.

In February two people were killed after a small plane crashed onto a busy road and collided with a bus in Sao Paulo, leaving charred aircraft parts strewn along the highway.

Military police said they had been burnt to death. Another six people including a motorcyclist and a woman on the bus were injured after being hit by flying debris.

Commenting on the latest incident involving a light aircraft, one social media user said: 'That was some fancy flying.'

Another wrote: 'Buy that guy a beer.

That's some incredible piloting there.'