Airplane makes emergency landing on Mont. highway

[July 22, 2011]  DARBY, Mont. (AP) -- A retired air traffic controller piloting a small plane to western Montana for a vacation wasn't exactly cleared for a landing when his plane's engine died -- good thing the highway was empty.

Pilot James Hollis of Erie, Colo., was forced to make an emergency landing on an unusually empty stretch of U.S. Highway 93 just north of Darby on Thursday morning when his Cessna 182 appeared to run out of fuel.

"He actually got pretty lucky because there's a fair amount of traffic on that road," Montana Highway Patrol trooper Scott Bennett said. "Without the engine running he had no control over where he was going to land."

Bennett said the plane was mistakenly drawing fuel from only one of its two tanks. Once on the ground, Hollis discovered the problem and switched tanks.

"He was pretty embarrassed," Bennett said.

The two-lane highway is flat in the area where the plane came down, but there are trees on both sides. Hollis also was lucky to avoid power lines in the area, the trooper said.

"It had the potential to be really bad," Bennett said.

Troopers closed the road so the plane could take off again. No one was injured.

[Associated Press]

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.