Wyoming Pilot Runs Out of Fuel, Lands on Highway, Still Makes His Doctor’s Appointment

The original story by Andrew Rossi for Cowboy State Daily.

A routine trip to the doctor turned into a pretty memorable Monday for a Hyattville pilot who ended up landing his plane on a Wyoming highway — and then later taking off from it.

Around 7:40 a.m. Monday, 54-year-old Martin Mercer was flying his single-engine Maule M-7-260C from Hyattville to Greybull for what he described as a “regular old medical appointment” when his plane ran out of fuel.

With the engine sputtering, Mercer made an emergency landing on US Highway 14 just outside Greybull.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol and Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office responded and found Mercer unhurt and the plane undamaged, WHP spokesman Aaron Brown said.

“We got the plane off the road and worked traffic control to make sure no one ran into it,” Brown said.

Mercer still managed to get into town and make his doctor’s appointment.

After the aircraft was refueled, authorities briefly shut down both lanes of US 14 so Mercer could safely take off from the highway and fly back home to Hyattville.

“We didn’t issue any citations because this was an emergency landing,” Brown said. “Part of being a WHP trooper is taking care of people, and that’s exactly what we did. It was pretty cut and dry.”

Mercer later told the Greybull Standard he’d been heading to see his doctor after getting run over by a cow, and that the engine “never did quit all the way, but it was sputtering pretty good.”

He also noted the landing wasn’t entirely stress-free: there was some oncoming traffic and a power line crossing the road.

“That could have been a little dicey,” he said.

Brown said while troopers don’t encourage pilots to land on highways, emergencies are different.

“If you’re running out of gas, you either land on the highway or you crash into the forest,” he said. “You’re going to do what saves your life in the moment.”