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The only casualty was the commute: Near Exit 4 of the New Jersey Turnpike, a single-engine plane that made an emergency landing in the northbound lanes early yesterday is towed.
The engine hiccupped and the plane started to shake. The oil pressure was dropping and they were losing altitude fast. They were going down.
It was then that Frank Vogt made the quick, calm decision to land his twin-seater Cessna 152 on the northbound New Jersey Turnpike in Cherry Hill.
"It wasn't the kind of morning I was expecting," said Vogt, of Oakhurst, Monmouth County, who flies traffic reporters over New Jersey.
It was shortly before the morning rush hour yesterday and traffic was light. Vogt, 28, landed the failing plane south of Exit 4. He navigated it over to the shoulder. Cars passed on his left.
No one was hurt, on the road or in the plane.
"It was surreal," he said. "Everything happened so fast."
The day had started routinely for Vogt, a pilot for Metro Networks Westwood One, which monitors traffic for radio and television stations. He arrived at Northeast Philadelphia Airport at 6 a.m. and performed his usual checks, he said yesterday afternoon in the kitchen of the home he shares with his parents.
Vogt said he twice monitored the fuel and the oil before taking off at 6:15 with Metro Networks traffic reporter Mike Lankford.
The sky was calm with little wind and few clouds. And except for a bang-up on I-95 in Philadelphia, not much was happening on the road.
At 6:45, the sun was red on the horizon and Vogt was 1,300 feet above Route 42 - a normal altitude, he said. That's when the Cessna started to vibrate.
"I looked down at the oil pressure gauge and it was dropping significantly," he recalled.
He turned the plane around, but the power was faltering, Vogt said. He issued a Mayday over an emergency frequency and was told by an air traffic controller that Philadelphia International Airport was seven miles away. South Jersey Regional Airport was four miles away. By that point, the craft had dropped below 1,000 feet.
"We can't make it back," Vogt told the controller.
Vogt has been a pilot for two years. After graduation from Airline Transport Professionals Flight Schools in Florida, he became a certified instructor at American Flyers in Morristown. He's been with Metro since September and has taken the same route many times, he said.
Vogt's life - his days as a La Salle University quarterback and summers as a lifeguard in New Jersey - didn't flash before his eyes. And he did not say his prayers, he said.
"I was like, 'Oh, wow. This is happening,' " he said. "Then it just became instinct. I focused on what I had to do. You're not nervous, because there's so much adrenaline pumping."
Lankford, in the passenger seat, held it together pretty well, too, Vogt said.
For a second, Vogt said, he considered bringing the plane down in a field, but it was still too dark for him to make out the terrain, he said. The highway was lit up.
They were now at 400 feet elevation.
"We're going to land on the Jersey Turnpike," Vogt told the controller.
He found a clear swath of road - no cars behind him, none in front of him - and lined the plane up with the flow of traffic. He glided in for a soft landing, he said. He let the plane coast rather than hitting the brakes, then eased the Cessna to the shoulder. The whole ordeal had lasted about 10 minutes.
"Great job," Vogt remembers the traffic reporter telling him. "Thank you."
Within minutes, he was joined by a state trooper and an FAA official on his way to work.
Oil had leaked underneath and on the side of the plane, Vogt said.
Authorities suspect that "a valve might have popped on the crankshaft that holds the propeller" because of the cold, Vogt said.
According to FAA records, the plane was built in 1981 and is owned by Out of the Blue Inc. in Delaware. Steven Russell, president of the firm, could not be reached for comment.
By 7:30 a.m., authorities had the plane hitched to a truck for towing to a turnpike maintenance yard.
Vogt sat in the cockpit to steer in case it became unhitched. He called his father.
"Turn on the news," he said. "You see a plane being towed?"
"Yes," said his father.
"I'm in it."
"You're a star," his mother texted him.
Back in his parents' kitchen, the phone ringing with calls from the media and worried loved ones, Vogt was looking forward to a beer with some friends, to letting what happened settle in.
He said he wouldn't take any time off.
"This will not deter me one bit," Vogt said. "It happens."
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