A small plane that had lost power briefly landed atop an 18-wheeler before crashing onto the highway, authorities said. The two people aboard the plane came out unscathed, and the truck driver never heard a thing.
“Nothing happened to the truck, except for a couple of skid marks up top,” said Trooper Lucila Torres, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The single-engine plane carrying an El Paso couple fell off the trailer and landed upside down on Interstate 10 during the emergency landing Thursday about 19 miles east of El Paso, Torres said.
Pilot Mark Taylor Davis, 45, and wife Mercedes Davis, 42, were returning home from Austin when the 1967 Mooney M20F developed engine trouble, state troopers said. The engine died before the plane could reach an airstrip in Fabens.
Truck driver Raymond Bennett White Jr., 44, of Dayton, Texas, told state troopers he didn’t hear anything when the plane landed atop his trailer, Torres said.
FAA investigators were reviewing the incident.