New pilot Vincent Fraser narrowly avoided disaster when he was forced to land his small plane on an active highway in North Carolina.
On Thursday, the Swain County Sheriff’s Office shared GoPro footage that was taken from Fraser's perspective as he made the tense landing after his plane's engine failed.
In the video, Fraser's plane appears to fly low to the ground, hovering over several cars before making contact with the road and barely missing a string of power lines. Eventually, the plane makes a smooth stop, veering off the highway to a side street.
A caption signed by Sheriff Curtis Cochran confirmed that there were no injuries from the incident, calling Fraser's landing an “outstanding job.”
Fraser, a Marine veteran from Florida, only recently acquired his pilot's license: He was certified to fly last fall and has less than 100 hours of experience in the air.
“There were so many things that could have been catastrophic but they didn’t happen,” Cochran wrote on Facebook.
Back in May, a similar incident was narrowly avoided after Darren Harrison, a passenger with no prior flying experience, landed a plane at Palm Beach International Airport after the aircraft's pilot experienced a medical emergency mid-flight and the plane began to nosedive toward the water.
When Harrison realized that there was something wrong with the pilot, they entered the cockpit on the single-engine Cessna 208 and contacted air traffic control to report the issue.
“I’ve got a serious situation here, my pilot has gone incoherent,” Harrison said on the radio, with the exchange recorded on LiveATC audio. “I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”
The controller was able to coach Harrison through all of the actions he needed to take to navigate the plane so that their aircraft could be located on the radar. Eventually, after more coaching from Robert Morgan, an air traffic controller at Palm Beach, Harrison safely landed the plane.
“I was pretty calm and collected the whole time because I knew it was a life or death situation,” Harrison told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie. “Either you do what you have to do to control the situation or you’re gonna die. And that’s what I did.”
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