Palm Beach Post
- A pilot made an emergency landing on a busy road in Jupiter, Florida, after experiencing engine trouble.
- The 19-year-old pilot, Niko Bray, safely landed the Cessna aircraft without any injuries or damage to vehicles.
- Bray noticed the engine’s RPM dropping shortly after taking off for a sightseeing tour.
For Niko Bray, an airplane sightseeing tour with a friend appeared to be routine. But as he piloted a Cessna 150G airplane in the skies above Jupiter on the afternoon of Friday, March 6, the flight was anything but that.
Bray, of suburban Palm Beach Gardens, ended up making an emergency landing, placing the aircraft down on West Indiantown Road. Jupiter police said the plane touched down at about 2:30 p.m. near the Home Depot store at Indiantown and Maplewood Drive.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the aircraft is owned by Timothy MacDonald Aircraft Holdings LLC in Daytona Beach. The FAA is investigating.
No one was injured in the incident. Bray managed to avoid touching any vehicles with the aircraft as it landed along Indiantown, perhaps Jupiter’s busiest road.
Bray, 19, obtained his pilot’s license in January 2025 and works as a flight instructor. He said he and a friend had taken off from Martin County and were sightseeing over northern Palm Beach County when he noticed an issue with the aircraft’s engine.
“Everything was normal,” he said. “I started climbing up and the engine rpm (revolutions per minute) started to drop, and I stopped climbing and I started descending, even though I had full power-setting, and then I just started looking for a spot to land.”
Bray quickly began troubleshooting while attempting to identify the issue.
“Nothing happened, so I just lined up with Indiantown Road and flew the plane for as long as I could,” he said. “I had to land eventually because I realized I kept going down lower, lower and lower.”
Bray said he initially considered attempting a landing on U.S. 1 but realized that the road was too narrow for his plane. As he got closer to Harbourside Place, he said he turned west and flew along Indiantown.
“I was just trying figure out what the problem was,” he said. “But it all happened so fast. It was less than two minutes from the time I realized there was a problem to landing on the ground.”
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Julius Whigham II covers northern Palm Beach County and public safety for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.