Plane Lands on California Highway

A small plane took off from an airport near a San Jose-area expressway yesterday—and three minutes later, it had to land on the road amid morning commuters. Fortunately, the whole thing happened safely: "There wasn't even a scratch," the owner of the flight school in charge of the plane tells the Mercury News. The plane's single engine wasn't generating the power necessary for the climb, so a flight teacher took over the controls and brought it down on the Capitol Expressway just before 8am.

"It required some skill on (the pilot's) part," a police official tells AP. "We're just thankful nobody got injured." The pilot ended up pulling over into a right-hand turn lane, and it helped that cars were stopped thanks to a red light. Final note: The Mercury News checked in with an FAA official about the incident, but the paper got a message that he was "not in the office due to a lapse in federal funding." (More small plane stories.)