A Surrey, B.C., air park voiced major concerns about the safety of a small amphibious ultralight aircraft just weeks before it crash landed onto a busy highway during rush hour.

Paul Deane-Freeman was flying over White Rock Wednesday evening practicing his water landings when his ultralight aircraft lost power at 1,200 feet.

“It seized up. That was it,” he said.

After making a mayday call, the pilot – who has been flying since he was a young boy – said he had to make the split-second decision to land on Highway 91.

The plane barely cleared the treetops and clipped a sign with its wing on its way down.

“I feel pretty lucky, considering that I got the plane as far as I did, and forced it over the treetops. I stalled it out trying to get over the trees,” he told CTV Morning Live.

The whole ordeal took less than two minutes, but the pilot said he was very aware of the danger of landing on the roadway.

“I thought ‘oh no, not here.’ This is the worst place for this to happen,” he said.

“I was thinking about the cars. I didn’t want to get run over by a semi-truck or get into a head-on collision.”

The craft came to rest on the southbound lanes, between 72nd and 64th Avenues, shortly before 6:30 p.m. while stunned commuters looked on. Miraculously, no cars were hit and no one on the road was injured.

Major safety concerns

The owner of King George Aviation, the air park where Deane-Freeman keeps his plane, said the craft should not have been in the air in the first place.

"What happened yesterday was 100 per cent bad decision making," Arnold Klappe said.

On April 11, Klappe sent a letter to Deane-Freeman highlighting an extremely high risk of having a serious accident because recommended repairs to the plane had not been completed.

"It needed new pistons, radiator system, The cooling system needed to be fixed properly, which it hadn't been," Klappe told CTV News.

"We told him until those issues were solved and fixed, that he should not fly the aircraft."

King George Aviation suspended “all maintenance and flight training services” for the pilot until it was satisfied that the hull was fixed and waterproofed and the engine was deemed “damage-free and safe by a qualified person.”

But despite the order, Klappe said just last week the engine of the plane had overheated.

The plane is fixable, but the air field won't allow the pilot to fly from its facility anymore.

Injured but not rattled

After the crash, Deane-Freeman was rushed to Royal Columbian Hospital for evaluation. He suffered a fracture to his lower back and says he is in significant pain.

Deane-Freeman became a pilot in 2001, but took a break from flying for several years. He got his current licence a year ago, and had been flying the plane he was in on Wednesday for the last four months.

Despite the crash, he said he plans to fly again as soon as he’s repaired the small plane.

He says the safe landing is part skill, part luck and a little bit of miracle.

“It was pretty amazing,” he said.

With files from CTV Vancouver's Nafeesa Karim