At the start of the new year, Brock Peters (18) from California was eager to prove that he had not received his pilot’s license four months earlier for nothing. He invited his grandmother and two cousins for a flight in a rented sports plane. The plan was to have breakfast about a hundred kilometers from his parental home and then return to the order of the day.
Unfortunately, the trip looked somewhat different in reality. When Peters and his family flew about a mile above the ground, they suddenly heard a bang. The plane’s engine had failed and the young man’s attempts to do something about it were futile. Large planes may have several engines, but Peters was not that lucky. A crash seemed to be guaranteed.
While the American young man heard his relatives sobbing, he himself tried to keep a cool head. During his training he learned how to make emergency landings, although he did not expect that he would have to regain that knowledge so quickly. The rough surface was also covered with all kinds of stones and plants. Peters therefore knew that a landing in untouched nature was a guarantee of serious physical injury and the total destruction of the aircraft. So he decided to steer the plane in the direction of Route 66. The historic highway is 3,940 kilometers long and runs through eight different states. An ideal runway, were it not for the fact that the road also attracts a lot of tourists.
After a short phone call with his mother, Peters decided to land on Route 66 after all. He managed to keep calm and was lucky that a motorist was able to swerve at the last minute. Moments later, his relatives were relieved to get off the otherwise undamaged plane, although they had questions about how the pilot managed to Top Gun-by avoiding all electrical wires hanging above the road.
Peters himself looks back relatively soberly on his spectacular landing. He prepares to go on a mission as a Mormon and attributes his success to God. “I knew I was going to land the plane right,” he told CBS News. “But the fact that I didn’t hit anything is due to divine intervention.” The young pilot intends to take it easy for a few days, but wants to be in the cockpit again next week.
One day he hopes to fly for a professional airline. With a similar portion of luck on his side, that shouldn’t be impossible.