It was supposed to be a holiday treat: a teenage pilot taking his grandmother and two cousins on a short Monday morning flight across southern California.
Then, with the family cruising 5,500ft in the air, the plane’s engine suddenly failed. Brock Peters, 18, who had received his pilot’s license just four months earlier, said he heard a “boom” from the engine and “immediately after that” he lost all his engine power.
Peters, whose career goal is to become an airline pilot, said he knew he had just minutes left to make an emergency landing. From behind him, he could hear his grandmother crying, but he said he tried to tune out the sound. “I was completely focused on the plane,” he said. “It was just me, and the plane, coming down, and getting everyone down safe.”
The teenager’s emergency landing on a quiet stretch of one of the most famous highways in the US, Historic Route 66, made headlines across the country. And Peters said his message to others is simple: “Stay calm, remember your training and trust in God.”
The 2 January flight had started out as “just a normal day”, said Peters, a community college student from Oak Hills, California, who started flying at age 16.
“I love the thrill of it. I love the speed. I love seeing things from the air. It’s a difference perspective,” Peters said.
He said he had cousins visiting for the holidays from Colombia and Colorado, and their plan was to use a single-engine Piper PA-28 to complete a flight of about 60 miles from Apple Valley airport to Riverside airport, where they would have breakfast before flying back. It’s a trip he’s taken with family members multiple times before, he said. “We’ll go down for breakfast, have a quick meal and a nice flight and keep going with our day.”
"We're coming through the pass and I hear a 'boom' and then I lose all my engine power," said 18-year-old pilot Brock Peters. Peters spoke to CBSLA this morning #WATCHhttps://t.co/bIbtsz37A2
— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) January 3, 2023
But after he had brought the rented plane to its cruising altitude, Peters heard that “boom”, and his attempts to restart the engine failed. Already, he said, the plane was losing altitude, and as he tried to restart the engine he was also starting to think about where to make an emergency landing, skills he had practiced for his pilot’s examination.
There were fields below the plane, Peters said, but, being from the area, he knew “there’s rocks, trees everywhere in these fields”.
“If I land there, we’re going to get serious injuries, and the plane is going to be completely destroyed,” he recalled thinking.
His best chance, Peters decided, was the road below them. It was “Old Route 66”, he said, “and I saw my landing point in the middle of the road.” There was a hill ahead of him, and a curve in the road before: he had to avoid both.
There was one car coming on the road toward him, he recalled, but it pulled off the road and out of the way of the descending plane. Another car traveling in the same direction was safely out of range.
While he noticed the telephone wires running alongside the highway, Peters said, he did not realize until later that there were also wires crisscrossing the highway every few hundred feet, and that somehow his small plane must have slipped between them without him even noticing.
“Honestly, I didn’t see them. I think that was divine intervention, moving those wires away from me,” he said.
As he felt the wheels touch down, he breathed “a sigh of relief”.
“All I had to do at that point was slow down,” he added. “The landing was just as smooth as any other landing.”
In dire straits, 18-year-old Brock Peters mustered everything he could recall from his emergency landing training. He got his pilot's license four months ago. https://t.co/2YtRWA5BcE
— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) January 3, 2023
The 18-year-old said he did not talk to his passengers much during the crisis, only telling them that they were going to have to land, and he doesn’t remember them saying much, either. His two cousins, who are in their 30s, and his 77-year-old grandmother were all left shaken, but unharmed, he said. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which logged the emergency landing on Cajon Boulevard, listed no injuries for the pilot and three passengers.
Peters said he called 911, and a fire truck arrived to help move the plane further off the road, he said. While the FAA is still investigating exactly what happened, according to a statement, Peters said his current understanding is that there was some kind of “internal failure” within the engine.
“We still can’t believe this even happened. It’s still shocking,” Peters said. A lot of emergency landings “are fatal”, he added. “And I can understand why, now [that] I had this experience.”
But Peters said the mid-flight crisis only encouraged him in his dream of becoming a professional airline pilot. “There’s been so many messages: ‘Good job’, ‘Amazing landing’, ‘You did great’,” he said. People have told him that he “really inspired the aviation community”.
“It was a good learning experience for me,” he said.
