OKC Pilot Saves Crash Landing After Landing Gear Failure

If you've ever flown, you know there's nothing quite as exciting as taking off, and nothing quite jarring as landing. Luckily, this charter had a great pilot when the landing gear failed.

Emergency crews responded, everyone was OK, and a hectic twenty minutes fell back into the norm at OKC's Wiley Post Airport.

It's good to see some videos of successfully executed crash landings. While pretty rare, those that go wrong tend to stick with you long after the video has finished.

On a slightly different note, if you're wondering why OKC's two main airports are named after famous people who died together in a horrific plane crash, there is an answer.

Wiley Post wasn't born in Oklahoma, but was raised in Maysville. The first time he saw an airplane was at the 1913 County Fair here in Lawton. After aviation school in Kansas City, Wiley returned and worked several jobs in SWOK. From construction to roughnecking the oil fields. Given that oil has always been a bust & boom industry, when times were tough, Post did a little car-jacking to make ends meat. After serving some prison time, he joined a circus, learned to fly, and went on to become the most famous pilot in the world, completing the fastest and first solo flight around the world. Even more famous than Charles Lindbergh until someone allegedly snatched his kid.

Will Rogers was, in many facets, "Oklahoma's Favorite Son." Movie star, writer, humorist, political commentator... His collective works are still relevant today, and hopefully you know a little about him. If not, pull a book from Amazon. His life is a far greater tale than I can squeeze into a paragraph.