The pilot of a small plane with engine trouble used a stretch of Calgary road as a runway early Wednesday, landing on 36th Street just south of 16th Avenue N.E.
No injuries were reported.
The Piper Navajo plane was inbound to Calgary International Airport with six people aboard just after 5:30 a.m. MT when engine trouble forced the pilot to land on the roadway.
Acting District Chief Jason Graham of the Calgary Fire Department said the pilot did "an amazing job" to land the plane safely.
Graham said a crane will be brought in from the airport to lift the plane onto a flatbed truck. Police said it had minor damage.
The plane, registered to Super T Aviation, left Medicine Hat, Alta., about 4:45 a.m. and was headed to Calgary, a company official said.
Owner Terri Super said the pilot has been with the company for "several years" and has more than 20 years of flight experience.
Jarrett Stobbe had just left the C-Train and was walking to work when he saw the plane about 10 metres overhead.
"I heard this loud noise and looked up, and it come right over my head," he said. "It was coming in at kind of an angle and clipped that light post, then landed. The pilot did a heck of a job to get it down like that."
Another witness, Michael Nadon, said he wasn't sure what he was seeing was real.
Shaken but unhurt
"I had to do a double take, definitely, this early in the morning," he said. "It looked like it [the plane] was approaching these businesses here, but it veered off just enough and that's when it clipped the light post."
Nadon spoke to people on board who said they were shaken but unhurt.
"They were mentioning that the plane lost its fuel pump. The female pilot, she landed the plane absolutely amazingly, given the circumstances."
It was expected the street would remain closed for several hours.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has been called in to investigate.