Brock Peters, 18, became a hero after he successfully completed an emergency landing just a few months after earning his pilot’s license.
The teenage pilot was flying his grandmother and cousins to breakfast in a single-engine plane over the Cajon Pass in the San Bernardino Mountains of southern California.
“We’re coming through the pass and I hear a ‘boom’ and then I lose all my engine power,” Peters said in an interview with CBS LA.
Due to the terrain, Peters was unable to contact an air traffic control tower, but he was able to reach his mother from his cell phone.
“I can hear my grandma crying in the back,” he said. “I’m like ‘I’ve got to tune her out, focus on what I need to do and get this plane down safely and make sure everybody is OK.’”
Peters showed true grit in the face of adversity as he brought the plane down onto Route 66.
Learn more about Peter’s life-saving landing in the news video below.