Plane lands safely on S.C. highway

— The safe MIDDLETOWN emergency landing Thursday night of a plane carrying members of professional skydiving group Team Fastrax is “one of those miracles that you give thanks to God for,” says John Hart, one of the group’s founders.

Five members of the Middletown-based team were en route to a scheduled fuel stop in South Carolina when the engine of their Cessna 206 airplane failed midair. They were headed to Charleston for the Cooper River Bridge Run, where they are scheduled to perform today. The plane was landed around 9 p.m. Thursday on a highway in Wellford.

Hart, who was not on the flight, but talked to the group by phone afterward, said he thinks a series of last-minute changes must have been divine intervention to save the plane from crashing.

“A lot of miracles happened,” Hart said.

First, Hart, a pilot-intraining, was supposed to be on the flight but swapped places with Hollis Collins, a pilot with about 1,000 hours of training under his belt.

Collins was supposed to sit in the middle, but sat up front next to the main pilot instead, Hart recounted.

And Highway 29, where the landing took place is normally busy, but at about 9 p.m., when the plane landed, there were no drivers, according to Hart.

When the engine stopped, the pilot followed emergency procedures by trying to restart the engine and look for alternative places to land. They saw football fields.

“They were heading towards those fields and at the last moment the pilot who was currently flying says ‘we’re going to come up short,’ and Hollis saw the highway,” Hart says.

“He immediately took the yoke and steered the plane and in a matter of seconds to the highway and avoided wires and trees and successfully landed in the dark.”