Sudbury pilot avoids disaster in highway landing

It was a close call for a Sudbury pilot Joseph "Leo" Arseneau over the weekend.

Before 10 p.m. on Friday, the 62-year-old pilot advised emergency crews on the ground that the battery for his radio and navigation equipment had died, leaving him to land the aircraft on Highway 402, east of Sarnia.

Arseneau, who was flying with four members of his family to a birthday party in Sarnia, was left with essentially only a compass.

According toCBC News in Windsor, the runway lights would not illuminate because there was no on-board signaling available on the plane. Normally, the plane would send a signal to the airport to light up the runway. Without instruments to rely on, Arseneau kept circling, trying to find the Sarnia airport.

Because it was later in the evening, there were no employees immediately available to manually turn on the runway lights at Sarnia's Chris Hadfield Airport.

"I could find it just by looking for it [during the day]. I know approximately where it is from my charts," he said of Sarnia's airport, but it was dark. "We were generally in the right area. But in the dark, everything looks like a runway."

Arseneau said he had lost contact with Toronto Air Traffic Control and that he was flying blind in the darkness, did not know where he was and was running out of fuel.

Police began guiding him to the Sarnia airport, where emergency services were waiting.

Moments after the call, however, the pilot experienced sputtering engines and told police he was making an emergency landing on the westbound lanes of the highway.

Arseneau said he was deliberately following a two-lane highway toward Sarnia but needed more room to land. He decided to look for Highway 402.

The plane landed on the highway between Oil Heritage Road and Mandaumin Road.

Arseneau landed the plane between westbound cars several behind him and a few in front. He also avoided an overpass.

"I got lucky. If there is no car beneath me, its behind me and it's not going to catch up," said Arseneau, who was landing at about 130 km/hr or so. "I was afraid of overtaking cars in front of me."

Arseneau has been flying since 1989 and has more than 5,000 hours in the air. He landed safely in the left-hand lane. His son, who was aboard, used a flashlight to warn traffic there was a plane sitting on the highway.

Arseneau saidhis sonmanaged to signal tocars on the highway that the plane was there, howeverone car did clip the side of the plane'swing.There were no injuries.

Transport Canada and the OPP are investigating.