A light aircraft, carrying two passengers on board, made an emergency “wheels up” touchdown at an airport in Australia’s New South Wales state after suffering a landing gear failure. The pilot reported the mechanical issue within minutes after taking off on Monday.
Pilot Peter Schott, a resident of Queensland state, took off from Newcastle Airport at around 8.30 am on Monday. The aircraft, Beechcraft B200 Super King Air, was en route to the nearby town of Port Macquarie.
The two passengers were identified as Michael Reynolds, 60, who was celebrating his birthday, and his wife Ines, 65.
Sky News Australia reported that Schott heard “a whole heap of really bad mechanical sounds” while he was retracting the landing gear, while a red light in the cockpit was on.
“I don’t want to continue the flight,” the pilot was quoted as saying to the air traffic controller.
After this, he conducted low fly-bys over the airport to give emergency crews, gathered near the airport tarmac, to assess the issue. Meanwhile, photos showed the landing gear door had opened.
When Schott realised that the issue could not be fixed while the plane was in the air, he decided to spend about four hours burning off fuel before landing.
The plane successfully landed while skidding off the runway before coming to a stop.
A video of the landing has gone viral on social media, in which the plane could be heard grinding along the runway after touching down, Fox Business reported.
Loud cheers and applause from a crowd that gathered to watch the landing could also be heard in the footage, while a vehicle, that looked like a fire engine, rushed towards the aircraft.
Speaking to 9News, Schott called the landing “quite textbook” as he “would have done this exercise for students, I don’t know, 200, 300 times”.
It was “all about minimising risk”, he said. “So, I had a figure in the back of my mind of how much fuel I wanted on board for the least risk, and I just circled.”
“So, I got that figured about an hour before I started preparing for the landing.”
Regarding passenger Michael Reynolds, the pilot said “he was getting a bit sick and throwing up. So I felt really bad for him”.
The couple thanked Schott for the “absolutely amazing” landing, adding that “he kept us informed the whole time, he was very calm, very collected”.
Meanwhile, New South Wales Police Superintendent Wayne Humphrey also praised Schott for his heroics and said, “He made a textbook wheels-up landing, which I was very happy to see… It was a great result. Really well done by the pilot.”
Source Agencies
