Plane makes safe belly landing
Aircraft damaged but instructor, student uninjured in emergency landing after landing gear fails to come down
By Stephanie
Kukkonen
Times & Transcript Staff
A student at the Moncton Flight College learned quite a lesson during a training session yesterday morning. It just wasn't the one he signed up for.
The student, whose name was not released, and flying instructor Matt Girouard took off for training at 10:30 a.m.
At 11:30 a.m. they realized that the main right-hand landing gear was stuck and would not come down.
"It's pretty unusual for that to happen," said Mike Doiron, principal and chief executive officer of the flight college. "Usually the emergency gear comes down and backs it up, but for some reason that didn't happen this time."
After attempting every possible manoeuvre to release the landing gear, Girouard and his student were instructed to land the twin engine, Piper Seminole on its belly, without using any landing gear. The two, along with a military aircraft that was in the area, flew around for 3 hours preparing and making more attempts to release the gear, but in the end skidded onto the runway in a 'textbook' belly landing.
"No landing gear gives the pilot a much better angle," said Doiron. "The plane is more level and it cuts down on damage. It's basically a glorified bobsled."
Neither the student nor Girouard were injured during the landing.
"(Incidents like this) concerns us, as much as we take it seriously, but there is only damage to the aircraft," Doiron told media. "No human injuries. This kind of incident is similar to having a really bad flat tire."
Girouard said he wasn't even that nervous during the flight, he was just concentrating on getting down safely.
"I was just happy we were fine," he said after getting out of the airplane and being cleared by paramedics. "I felt a little shaky (after getting out) but if you get too stressed, you might make the situation worse than it is."
Girouard said he and his student just rehearsed repeatedly the landing procedure they were going to take. The plane had five hours worth of fuel and made several low flying runs to test out the runways before finally making as smooth a landing as possible on no wheels.
"It was fine," says Girouard. "It went pretty smooth."
Doiron, however, called it a text-book landing for that kind of procedure.
The belly of the plane was scratched on the pavement and the propellers were bent, but Girouard said he didn't take much time to consider damage to the aircraft. Once again, he said he was just happy that nobody was injured.
The student has been enrolled at the college for about eight months and Girouard says he has been flying since 2003. He and Doiron said that, even though this has never happened at the college before, the instructor's experience is responsible for the safe landing.
"It's nothing the instructor hasn't seen before," said Doiron. "The instructor would be in charge in this situation."
Girouard said the student handled the situation very well, and they even had time for jokes while they were burning fuel.
"The student was a little nervous near the end, but we had a few laughs and some jokes," Girouard said. "He was pretty calm, as well."
