John Pedersen was on a solo sunrise flight around the Loop when his single-engine, fixed-wing RANS S-6 Coyote II started shaking violently.

“O’Hare tower: mayday,” he said to air traffic control. “We are going down on Lake Shore Drive. This is a mayday.”

It was around 6 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013, when he successfully landed his plane in the northbound lanes of Lake Shore Drive near Jackson Street and Buckingham Fountain. No one was hurt, but Pedersen said two vehicles struck his left wing after he landed and drove off.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic,” Pedersen later told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I thought it was the safest place to put the plane down.”

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Chicago Sun-Times

Pedersen is not the only pilot who has ever made an emergency — or “forced” — land

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