Tiny Plane Makes Precarious Emergency Landing

A small, single-engine plane was forced to land in the rocky Westfjords, and pulled off one of the more precarious landings in recent memory.

RÚV reports that two men took a single engine prop plane out of Ísafjörður this morning, and shortly thereafter were forced to make an emergency landing on the Súðavíkurhlíð hill road, connects the municipalities of Ísafjarðarbær and neighbouring Bolungarvík to the northern route south. Though diverse in terrain, the Westfjords area – known for its steep mountains and scant coastlines – does generally not offer the kinds of surfaces and surroundings upon which one might want to make an emergency landing.

However, as can be seen in the photos in the above link, the two managed to bring the plane to a gentle stop by the side of the road, centimetres away from a precipitous drop to the beach below.

“Never in my life did I think I would ever see a plane land on the Súðavíkurvegur road,” passerby Þorsteinn Haukur Þorsteinsson told reporters. “There isn’t a lot of traffic on  Súðavíkurhlíð right now. Maybe this is why they could land.”

Police are still investigating what exactly necessitated landing the plane on this spot.