A small plane was forced to make an emergency landing on a Johnson County highway Saturday evening.
A Stearman model biplane ran out of gas just shy of the Iowa City Municipal Airport and was forced to land on Highway 218 near mile marker 94, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office said in a release. The aircraft landed safely between the Interstate 80 interchange and Melrose Avenue exit, then “steered into a drainage ditch” to avoid traffic.
The pilot, John Ockenfels of Swisher, was flying alone and was not injured. The airplane also did not suffer any damage.
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Plane takes off from Highway roadway
Ockenfels had taken off from the Iowa City airport earlier in the afternoon.
Officials helped refuel the plane on the roadside and shut down Highway 218 for “approximately one minute” as Ockenfels used the road as a temporary runway to take off and return to the Iowa City Municipal Airport.
FlightRadar24 and FlightAware , two websites that record swaths of flight data, did not have a record of Saturday’s flight.