In a small plane like that, it’s much safer to land on a field or on a meadow than on a road.
Not only for others but also for yourself.
There’s way too many obstructions around roads you can crash into before touching down on the tarmac.I dunno if you’re familiar with I-95 in the US, or Florida in general which is where this happened, but fields and meadows essentially do not exist.
And weren’t interstate highways designed partially with aircraft making emergency landings in mind? Or is that like urban legend misinformation?
They were absolutely designed with military transportation in mind. And I’ve never seen powerlines or trees that crossed an interstate so I’m inclined to believe that was considered if not intended!
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if use by military aircraft was a design consideration, it’s been done in Europe, notably Sweden.
They may not have seen a better option. I’m pretty sure this is the flight in question. Which, the linked video seems to be incorrect in stating that he problem occurred soon after take-off (total flight time is just over an hour). Guessing from the flight track, it looks like they turned east to go back towards the airstrip they took off out of. They were pretty well lined up with the runway, but didn’t have the altitude to make it. Granted, they should have been looking for places to set down as they went, and it may just be that the freeway looked like the best option at the time. There is a lot of residential housing in the area they were in and the open areas seems to have a lot of tree cover. The freeway probably looked like an oasis of open ground in a sea of houses and trees.
EDIT: this is the source I used for the airplane’s tail number to look it up on flightradar24.
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