Small plane makes emergency landing in Northway Mall parking lot

A Cessna 182 made an emergency landing in the parking lot of the closed Northway Mall on Sunday afternoon after the plane’s engine quit, authorities said.

The pilot and passenger walked away without injury, according to Stacia Joyce, the National Transportation Safety Board investigator on the incident.

“He did a really good job,” Joyce said Monday, of the pilot.

The mall, which opened in 1980 before shuttering most stores in 2020, is located on Penland Parkway off the Glenn Highway and Airport Heights Drive in Northeast Anchorage. Merrill Field, the plane’s destination, is nearby.

The pilot said they took off for Cantwell earlier in the day from Merrill and were nearly back when the plane’s engine lost power, Joyce said.

The plane landed without damage but then it hit a curb near the mall entry, launched over it, and hit a second curb, she said. The impact broke the plane’s nose gear.

The mall was partly demolished last fall as part of future remodelling plans.

Joyce said she told the pilot that it was a good thing the mall was no longer open, “otherwise the parking lot would have been full of cars.”

The pilot on Monday planned to move the aircraft to his hangar, where investigators will examine it to try to determine the cause of the engine failure, she said.