Small plane makes emergency landing on frozen Gray's Lake

Pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger recently gained fame for making an emergency landing of his US Airways jet on the Hudson River instead of trying to reach a New York-area airport.

Perhaps it wasn't as dramatic, but the pilot of a one-engine airplane owned by a flight school decided against landing at a small strip in Round Lake Park and touched down on frozen Gray's Lake in the namesake village after engine trouble developed Tuesday.

Authorities said the pilot and a passenger were uninjured after the 1972 Cessna 150L landed on the ice toward the middle of the lake about 4:30 p.m. The plane remained on the ice after the incident.

"I'm sure he wanted to make sure he stayed clear of any buildings or people," said Grayslake Fire Protection District Capt. Peter Nowak.

Other than knowing the unidentified pilot and passenger are safe, details about what happened weren't immediately available to an official for Palwaukee Flyers, formerly known as Flight Center at Service Aviation Inc., the company that owns the plane.

Dave Klopfleisch, an instructor and safety officer at the flight school based at Chicago Executive Airport near Wheeling, said it would not have been difficult to land on the ice.

"As flight instructors, that's how we train people to think and use the tools they've got," Klopfleisch said. "Emergency procedures are one of the many sections of learning how to fly."

Nowak said the pilot had wanted to make the emergency landing at Campbell Airport in Round Lake Park, which is about two miles southwest of the lake.

After touching down on the ice, authorities said, the pilot taxied to a stop roughly 25 feet from the rear deck of a house on Lake Street, just south of Center Street in downtown Grayslake. Nowak said the ice likely is at least 14 inches thick.

Tracey Babuta of Grayslake was among those who checked out the plane. Her sister owns the home closest to where the airplane was parked.

"I thought it was going to be crashed," Babuta said.

Klopfleisch said the plane probably was being used for student training or a proficiency flight.

Gray's Lake is an oval-shaped, 80-acre glacial body of water with a maximum depth of 20 feet, according to the most recent report by the Lake County Health Department's Lakes Management Unit in 2002. The average depth is 5.7 feet.

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