"I knew I had a problem and I needed a place to land, and that's basically what I did," the 73-year-old pilot said in a low Arkansas drawl.

After 10,000 hours flying in the Air Force and 35 years in the same Cessna 180 he threaded down between speeding cars and trucks on the Glenn Highway Friday afternoon, Toney talks like the landing was as easy as pulling up to the drive-through.

Toney, who also flew C-130s in the Vietnam War, took off from Birchwood Airport, about halfway between Anchorage and Wasilla, at about 5 p.m. Friday. After about 15 minutes of carefree sightseeing, just as he was passing over the Thunderbird Falls exit of the Glenn Highway and turning to fly back to Birchwood, he heard a loud bang.

Toney saw something smash through his plane's cowling and fly up over and past the top of the windshield (imagine you're driving down the highway and an engine part tears through the hood of your car and lands a mile behind you). Toney said oil blew all over the windshield. He figured he better call in an emergency on the radio.

At this point Toney was about 1,200 feet high, with a hole in his engine as big as a grapefruit. So what does he do? He pulled the throttle back, on account of he was afraid the engine might catch fire, and started looking for a place to set her down.

"I knew the highway was there and I knew I could land there," he said. "Only problem was the traffic."

He found a break on the southbound lane and landed the plane without breaking a sweat. "I knew I had a problem and I needed a place to land, and that's basically what I did," he said.

No injuries. No damage to the plane. Pretty impressive. But Toney isn't patting himself on the back. He's just another bush pilot, bred in Arkansas, seasoned in Vietnam, and finished in Alaska, who took control when life threw him a curve ball (or in this case, a busted connecting rod.)

"I didn't think too much about it, then or now," he said.

Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com.