"Originally there were no options," says pilot who landed his plane on a North Carolina highway.
"Originally there were no options," says pilot who landed his plane on a North Carolina highway.
A pilot has been hailed for successfully making a risky emergency landing on a busy motorway after his engine failed three times.
Pilot Fraser was flying in a small plane in North Carolina when he struck problems while in the air.
With things starting to go pear-shaped, the pilot made a split-second decision to use the motorway as a landing strip, hoping to avoid possible disaster.
GoPro video of his perilous landing showed Fraser manoeuvring his single-engine plane under power lines and into the motorway's centre turn lane, with cars travelling in two lanes on either side.
Fraser, who was flying with his father-in-law, spoke about his harrowing July 3 landing on Monday morning on CNN's New Day.
"The only thing really going through my head was I needed to keep my father-in-law safe, and I needed to keep the people on the ground safe, and I was just trying to do it the best that I can without hurting anybody," Fraser told CNN.
Explaining the decision to land on the motorway, Fraser said when the engine started failing he couldn't spot any roads because of the trees and mountainous landscape.
"Originally there were no options," says pilot who landed his plane on a North Carolina highway.
He then saw what he thought was abridge up ahead believing it was their "best and only chance". But they were too low to make the bridge landing and there were too many cars and people around.
He feared if he attempted the landing there would be casualties.
With options running out, Fraser decided the river near the bridge was going to be the best place to land.
But suddenly, views of a motorway came out of nowhere.
"By some miracle, that highway ... just showed up to my left because you couldn't see it before because of the mountains and the valleys and the trees."
Fortunately, Fraser said he had enough altitude to turn the aircraft toward the motorway at the last second.
The video from Fraser's GoPro camera shows him landing in the middle of the road as traffic passes by on either side of the aircraft.
"They had to have been so terrified."
Swain County Sheriff Curtis Cochran praised the landing in a Facebook post: "What an OUTSTANDING job and no injuries. AMAZING."
"There were so many things that could have been catastrophic but they didn't happen," Cochran said.
A mechanic came to look at the plane and three days later Fraser managed to take off from the motorway.
The takeoff was "terrifying," Fraser said, but he made it into a Marine Corps objective.
"I went back to when I was in the Marine Corps and made it my mission to get off that mountain. And so you know, I knew the plane was safe, I knew the plane has been checked out, I knew I had the training," Fraser said. But his nerves were raw.
"I honestly just wanted to turn it off, get out, throw up. You just can't believe this is actually happening."
