A Canadian pilot was forced to land his single-engine plane on Highway 11 early Thursday afternoon.
The pilot made the emergency landing about 1 p.m. near Athena. Tom Strandberg, public information officer for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said a fuel line problem in the plane made a quick landing necessary.
Strandberg said the incident didn’t cause any motorists to veer off the highway. People on scene were able to move the plane off the road and get traffic moving.
After the pilot fixed the fuel line, ODOT workers closed a stretch of highway again so he could take off.
“Every few years, we have a pilot land on one of our highways,” Strandberg said.
He said the pilot flew to the Walla Walla airport to get his plane checked out.
The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reported that the plane had a frozen fuel line which the pilot thawed. The Federal Aviation Administration considers the emergency landing a non-incident.
This story originally appeared in East Oregonian.
