On January 19, 2024, Southern Airways Express flight 246 departed Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) bound for Lancaster Airport (LNS) in Pennsylvania. The aircraft operating the flight was a small, single-engine Cessna 208B commuter plane. It carried five passengers and two crew.
Shortly after takeoff from Dulles’s runway 30, the engine started losing power. The crew declared an emergency but could not maintain enough altitude to return to the airport. They landed on a nearby highway—Loudoun County Parkway (state route 606) in Arcola, Virginia. The aircraft slid into a guardrail which damaged the prop and landing gear, but was otherwise intact. It came to rest adjacent to an IHOP restaurant. Nobody was hurt.
Officials at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), have now established an “emergency breakfast zone” west of the main airport, and the part of Loudoun County Parkway where flight 246 landed is now designated runway 2/20. It is available for aircraft with wingspans up-to sixty feet when the crew or passengers are experiencing urgent pancake needs.
The FAA has updated the airport diagram for Dulles accordingly (see below).
And yes, the chart is made to-scale. Here it is with USGS map data overlaid.