Owen Navarro: Flight Instructor's Cool Composure Saves Teen Student in Night Emergency Landing

When the engine on their small aircraft suddenly failed at 6,000 feet on a pitch-black November night over Oklahoma, certified flight instructor Owen Navarro had just seconds to make life-or-death decisions. With his 16-year-old student pilot Landon Atkinson beside him, Navarro demonstrated the kind of calm professionalism that defines true heroes in aviation.

It was Friday, November 18, 2025, and the pair had taken off from Ponca City Airport, heading back to Sundance Airport in Yukon. Then came the terrifying sound Atkinson described as "a solid loud thud." The tachometer—which shows engine RPMs—instantly dropped to zero. The engine was dead.

For 14 harrowing minutes, Navarro glided the powerless aircraft through complete darkness, with only the ambient light from Interstate 35 below to orient them. He attempted to restart the engine—no luck. With power lines, trees, and moving vehicles to avoid, Navarro made the critical decision to land on Highway 77 in Noble County.

"I kind of watch it to see the headlights illuminate down the street, and at that point, I knew that's what we were going to have to do," Navarro recalled. Threading the needle between obstacles in the dark, he brought the plane down safely on the highway near Yearling Road, just north of Perry.

The landing was so smooth that neither the plane nor its occupants were damaged. "When we landed, the first sounds you hear are the coyotes," Atkinson said, describing the eerie howling echoing across the dark Oklahoma landscape.

Throughout the emergency, Navarro praised his young student's composure: "You were a lot calmer and more relaxed than I probably would have been as a 16-year-old student." But it was Navarro's expert training, quick thinking, and steady hands that turned a potentially tragic engine failure into a textbook emergency landing—and brought both pilots home safely to fly another day.