Seconds Decided – After an Emergency Landing: Now the Hero Speaks of the Sky

Friday afternoon A2 motorway near Brezje in Slovenia: images from surveillance cameras captured the dramatic seconds between life and death. A white plane, model Aquila A 210 of German design, flies unsteadily over the busy roadway, loses more and more altitude and flies just over the heads of the astonished drivers. Then it ends up on the road, hits the dike and comes to a stop in a dust cloud and with the rear broken off on the hard shoulder.

Captain and copilot climb out of the wreckage unharmed – without touching a single car during their daring maneuver. An aviation feat that could have ended fatally!

“All of a sudden all the warning lights flashed”
Aref Shabanpoor, a Graz-based pilot from the Austrian aviation training in Kalsdorf, is the hero of the air who delivered this feat. The 40-year-old, born in Iran, describes for the first time the anxious moments at 400 meters altitude to the “Steirerkrone”: “We had to return the plane from Lesce-Bled airport to the capital of Styria, we had already had two test flights with successfully completed. Suddenly all the warning lights flashed and the engine stalled. I had 60 seconds to decide.”

Returning to the airport of departure was out of the question – it was already too far away. This was also confirmed by later calculations.

“My only chance was to find a hole”
Aref Shabanpoor – he has been a passionate pilot for 20 years and has completed 4000 flights worldwide – all that was left was the spectacular crash landing on the highway: “As usual on Friday it was crowded, with power lines and forests all around. My only chance was to find a gap between the vehicles, we didn’t have many options because there was a bridge right in front of us.”

Assisting copilot Dalibor Jelisic warned of a car directly below the plane. “The most important thing for me was not to hurt anyone.” The master pilot – he is married with two daughters – kept his cool and pulled the two-seater down. Then the impact – and the relief: no one got hurt!

Aref Shabanpoor: “I believe in God, but there was no time for prayers. We were lucky and had a guardian angel on board.” “This guardian angel was on my left hand,” said co-pilot Dalibor Jelisic in tribute to his colleague. “He wasn’t thinking about himself, only about the others.”

“The lives of others were more important to him than his own”
“Hats off to this achievement,” said Karl-Heinz Mali, head of Austrian aviation training. The intensive pilot training paid off: “What we practice every day on the simulator, our captain has put into practice perfectly. I am happy and thankful that everyone was unharmed. Because Aref cared about other people’s lives than about his own.”