Out of gas, pilot lands on I-495

A 57-year-old pilot from Michigan landed his single-engine airplane on Interstate 495 in rush-hour traffic in Boxborough yesterday after he ran out gas, authorities said.

The Cessna 170 landed without doing any damage or injuring anyone, said Jim Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in New England.

In an interview by phone, pilot Allan W. Kidd of Brownstone, Mich., said he was traveling with friend Steve Bradshaw to a reunion for Vietnam veterans in the Boston area.

Kidd had flown out of Grosse Ile Municipal Airport in Michigan and had been trying to land at a nearby airport, but could not get clearance. He said he was circling until he could be diverted to an airport a few miles away.

He said he did not have enough fuel to make it to the airport. He did not know the name of either airport. He said he had no choice but to put his Cessna down on the highway, which he said was full of traffic shortly before 5 p.m.

"I had my hands full and wanted to put this on the ground without hurting anyone," he said last night as his plane was being hauled away by a tow truck. "If we put this in the woods, we'd both be dead now. There weren't any other options."

He said he glided onto the northbound lanes at a speed of about 45 miles per hour and coasted into the breakdown lane about a mile south of the Route 111 overpass in Boxborough.

State Police reported that a trooper assigned to the Leominster barracks responded to the aircraft's emergency landing about 5:02 p.m.

The incident forced the closing of the right and breakdown lanes for about two hours.

Kidd said he has been flying since the war, when he flew L-19 Bird Dogs. "I wasn't nervous," he said. "I just wanted to live."