There are many unforgettable days from my 20 years of traffic reporting on WSB Radio, but few can top what took place on May 8, 2015, along I-285 in Doraville.
At around 10:10 a.m., a Piper PA-32R-300 took off from DeKalb-Peachtree Airport with four people on board. A contaminated fuel line caused the flight to struggle gaining altitude, the NTSB report stated. The pilot’s last transmission to air traffic control at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport was “we’re going down here at the intersection.”
The Piper hit the median wall of I-285/eastbound (Inner Loop) right between the exit and entrance ramps at Peachtree Boulevard (Exit 31). All four people, en route to a graduation at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, died. As tragic as that was, the crash miraculously did not hurt anyone on the ground.
Police dashcam of the harrowing incident shows the plane wobbling at low altitude over I-285 and then disappearing, before a large column of black smoke towers up. The officer arrived to find the plane obliterated and engulfed in flames, as motorists either pulled over or gingerly drove by in the right lanes.
Remarkably, the descending plane only nicked the mirror of a passing truck. If the trajectory or timing had been just a tick different, the whole situation could have been so much worse.
This was just after morning drive and the WSB Skycopter had refueled to make an appearance at a career day at a school in Douglasville. We were on the helicopter pad and just starting the bird up when we saw the smoke. Since we were technically off-duty and en route to a timed appearance, we only made a quick pass of the scene, not knowing what it was it was. In fact, I thought it was a large vehicle fire. Knowing that Newschopper 2 would launch on this, we did not feel the need to stay, so we proceeded to the school.
Thankfully, morning drive traffic lead anchor Smilin’ Mark McKay was still in the area after his shift and jumped in his vehicle to give reports on WSB from the scene. Parked on a grassy shoulder, McKay and the rest of the gathering media saw the debris field up close.
Just minutes after we landed in Douglas County and talked to the kids, we got the call to head back to the scene and provide relief to both news helicopters. The choppers had smaller tanks and needed to refuel. We arrived to see I-285 shut down in both directions and first-responders set up in a fairly big radius.
DeKalb police forced I-285/north/westbound (Outer Loop) traffic onto I-85. I-285/eastbound traffic was forced onto GA-400. Interestingly, Peachtree Boulevard traffic could access I-285 in both directions, because the plane crash was between the ramps. This mega-closure, of course, jammed I-285. I-75/85 (the Downtown Connector) was then packed as an alternate route.
Other circuitous routes started feeling heat in the northern suburbs. We saw Holcomb Bridge Road/Highway 140 stacked between Roswell and Norcross. Highway 20 was a hot mess between Cumming and Buford.
The word had spread far and wide and people took action.
By roughly the noon hour, the fire was out and crews reopened I-285/westbound, the opposite lanes from the plane crash. We flew constantly around the scene and eventually landed about an hour before our takeoff for the afternoon rush hour.
During that landing time, I relieved McKay, who had watched the cleanup for several hours, and parked next to I-285. We all figured that I-285/eastbound would be shut well into and maybe through PM rush hour, as the investigation continued. But by just after 3 p.m., we saw HERO units and police begin to slowly pace traffic and open lanes.
Normally, when lane closures happen adjacent to drive times, the delays reverberate and last and they sometimes cause new crashes. On this day, so many people had been scared from I-285 that the delays at this gnarly scene were almost nonexistent soon after its opening.
Traffic was really bad in surrounding areas, as mentioned. But people took notice of a major event and made other plans.
The I-285 plane crash at Peachtree Boulevard is not as high in the lexicon of recent traffic disasters as have been some of Atlanta’s other traffic disasters, like Snowmageddon in 2014 and the I-85 bridge collapse in 2017. That is likely because of the coordinated effort of different police departments to channel the stopped traffic and the swift effort by responders to open as much as the freeway as soon as they could.
All that said, it is still a terrible day for the friends and family close to the four who died. The family has created an Ole Miss scholarship fund that has well exceeded its goals. We can all learn from how they have leveraged some good from an awful tragedy.
Doug Turnbull has covered Atlanta traffic for over 20 years and written “Gridlock Guy” since 2017. Doug also co-hosts the “Five to Go Podcast,” a weekly deep dive on stories in motorsports. Contact him at fireballturnbull@gmail.com.
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