Plane Emergency-Lands on Georgia Road, Hits 3 Vehicles

A single-engine plane made an emergency landing on a busy road in Gainesville, Georgia, on Monday, colliding with three vehicles and injuring two people with minor injuries, according to authorities.

The incident occurred around 12:10 p.m. local time on Browns Bridge Road, a major thoroughfare about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta. The Hawker Beechcraft BE36 had departed from Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport in Gainesville, bound for Cherokee County Regional Airport in Canton, when the pilot reported engine trouble shortly after takeoff. Unable to return to the airport due to insufficient power, the pilot executed a forced landing on the roadway.

"We lost our engine taking off out of Gainesville," pilot Thomas Rogers told WAGA-TV. "We tried to glide back, did everything by the book, but realized we weren't going to make it back with how far out we were, so we came down on the road."

Gainesville police Capt. Kevin Holbrook described the sequence of events, noting that the plane's right wing clipped a vehicle upon touchdown, dislodging the aircraft's fuel tank, which landed in the rear of an SUV. The plane struck a total of three cars amid heavy traffic, but avoided power lines and other...