MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – A light plane with three people on board landed safely without landing gear on Monday after circling an Australian airport for nearly three hours to burn fuel.
Police said the 53-year-old pilot and his passengers, a 60-year-old man and a 65-year-old woman, walked on their own after landing from the twin-turboprop Beechcraft Super King Air on the runway at Newcastle Airport, north of Sydney. Superintendent Wayne Humphrey said.
Humphrey told reporters at the airport that the pilot “did a textbook wheel-up landing. I was very happy to see that.”
Paramedics examined all three at the airport, Humphrey said, but none needed to be taken to hospital.
Mr Humphrey said the plane had taken off from Newcastle and was on a 180km flight north to Port Macquarie when the pilot sounded the alarm saying there was a problem with the landing gear.
The plane landed without incident on the tarmac about three hours later at 12:20 p.m., according to the video.
Fire trucks and ambulances were also on standby.
The plane is owned by Port Macquarie-based Eastern Air Services, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Aviation safety expert Ron Virtue said the pilot would have decided to return to Newcastle because the airport had better emergency response resources than Port Macquarie.
“The pilot made a pretty exemplary landing and got everyone on the ground safely, and that's the most important accomplishment,” Balch said. “The situation could have been much worse.”
“To reduce the possibility of a fire during fuselage landing, we have to shut off the fuel and shut off the electrical system. But clearly the pilots achieved this textbook safe result,” Balch said. he added.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau will investigate what happened.
The runway will remain closed for 24 hours while the condition is assessed, but the damage to the tarmac appears to have been “cosmetic,” Humphrey said.
