BUFFALO, Iowa — Two people suffered minor injuries early Saturday morning when their single-engine airplane crashed onto CPKC railroad tracks in Buffalo, WQAD-TV reports.
Responding to a report of a vehicle accident about 1:40 a.m. on State Route 22, officers from the Buffalo Police Department found a single-engine aircraft had crashed. The pilot was attempting to make an emergency landing on the highway, which closely parallels the railroad tracks, when the plane’s wing clipped a telephone pole, sending the plane onto the tracks. The pilot and a passenger were treated at the scene and released.
The Buffalo Volunteer Fire Department also responded (and said in a Facebook post that the aircraft accident was “a first”), as did the Scott County Sheriff’s Department.
Buffalo is just south of Davenport, Iowa, on the CPKC main line along the Mississippi River. The line currently sees about eight trains a day.
It was the second time in three days a light plane had ended up on railroad tracks while making an emergency landing. On Thursday, a plane landed on CN tracks near Flint, Mich. [see “Canadian National line in Michigan becomes landing strip …,” Trains News Wire, April 21, 2023].
Judging by the looks o the plane, the pilot and passenger were very fortunate to have survived the crash landing. And hats off to the the pilot of the plane that landed on the CN tracks in Michigan; he must have had more experience in this emergency procedure? And we in both cases a train did not crash into the grounded plane.
A bad week-end for small plane crashes onto railroad tracks ….?
Judging from the pictures of this wrecked plane, the pilot and passenger were most fortunate to avoid more serious injuries in this crash.
Don’t they realize this is vital international mainline?
That is 2 planes in the past week crash landing on the rails. How weird.
“So what happened to the airplane”?
“Well you see, we were flying, and then we flew onto some train tracks…”