Plane Emergency Landing

Rodney Berwalden, an amateur pilot and owner of a small electronics company in Savannah, Georgie, made an emergency landing on busy Interstate 4 Friday, saving those on board the aircraft but stalling busy Walt Disney World traffic for hours. 

Orange County Sheriff’s deputies and Florida State Highway Patrol troopers responded immediately to control traffic and check on the well-being of the aircraft’s occupants, who consisted of Berwalden’s girlfriend and her two children.

Officers kept the two leftmost lanes of the interstate open while crews came to load the airplane on a flatbed, but gawkers greatly slowed traffic. Corporal Alice Lowllian of the Florida State HIghway Patrol says that “seeing an airplane right in the middle of the road takes some getting used to.” It took crews about two hours to clear the plane from the scene and get traffic back to normal.

The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, and the Federal Aviation Administration have started the investigation. Despite early reports pointing to a fuel system problem on the plane, the agencies said they would not have an official cause for some time. Varda Geister, a spokesperson for the NTSB, says that “these investigations typically take 90 to 120 days.”

According to Berwalden the plane’s engine started failing on the last leg of the trip. “I knew we didn’t have much time left in the air, so the interstate seemed like the best option,” Berwalden said Saturday. “I saw some open lanes, so I went for it.”

Berwalden put the plane down in the rightmost two lanes of westbound I-4, just east of the Apopka-Vineland Road exit, near the Walt Disney World resort. The highway was clogged with weekend travelers headed for the theme park. Westbound traffic backed up for approximately four miles toward downtown Orlando, causing many delays to people’s Disney World plans. Berwalden apologizes for this, saying he had three people on the plane he “had to protect”. As for now, Berwalden said his group has rented a car at Walt Disney World to finish their trip.