Washington  - A pilot was arrested late Monday after flying a small, stolen plane from a Canadian airfield about 1,600 kilometres into the United States and ignoring scrambled fighter jets before landing in the central state of Missouri.

The Cessna 172 landed on a dirt road in southern Missouri near the Arkansas state line, and the pilot fled but was quickly captured by State Highway Patrol officers.

Citing a source with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the broadcaster CNN identified the pilot as flight school student Adam Leon, a 31-year-old Turkey native and naturalized Canadian. He reportedly had changed his name from Yavuz Berke.

The plane was reported stolen from a flight school in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The US military spotted the aircraft as it entered the United States over Lake Superior and tracked the plane for five hours until it landed, apparently as the pilot was running out of fuel.

The pilot's motive was unknown, and he never made contact with air traffic controllers. He was reported to have held widely changing altitudes during the flight but seemed to ignore population centres as he crossed at least four states.

The incident caused buildings to be evacuated in Madison, the Wisconsin state capital, when the mysterious Cessna passed overhead. (dpa)