FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - No one was hurt when a small plane had to make an emergency landing at the Fort Wayne airport Thursday partly thanks to the quick thinking and expertise of a 122nd Fighter Wing pilot.
Lt. Col. John Carroll was on the Indiana Air National Guard base and was about to go pick up some pilots when he heard that a Bonanza was going to make an emergency landing. The plane's landing gear under the nose was stuck half-way down.
"I was listening, king of minding my own business, and I heard on the radios he was intending to land on the grass," Carroll said.
That caught Carroll's attention. He's flown Bonanzas for years and knew landing on the grass with landing gear partially down could be a big mistake.
"With the nose gear up and the main gears down, the nose is going to pitch down," he explained. "So if he lands on a soft surface, even though it's been dry around here, you don't know how the surface of the grass is going to be. If something catches the aircraft, it can flip over on its back."
Carroll got on the radio and talked to the pilot in the sky.
"He was doing a great job. He had gone through the whole checklist," Carroll said.
Carroll was on the runway when the plane did a low pass. Using binoculars, Carrol could see the problem.
"I could confirm exactly what was wrong with his aircraft and give him information to know it wasn't a false indicator in his cockpit. It was stuck nose gear. It's very important to know and have that critical data before attempting a landing," Carroll said.
Over the radio, Carroll guided the pilot through landing on the runway instead of the grass.
"I recommended that he land the aircraft on the runway as slowly as possible, shut the engine down before the nose touches the ground and shutting the fuel off," Carroll said.
When the plane touched the runway, the landing gear collapsed and the plane slid more than a hundred feet. The two people inside, who were both pilots, were not hurt. The plane didn't have a lot of damage either.
"That's the good outcome of landing on a good, dry, long prepared surface versus a rough, unknown, uneven surface, ie: the grass," he said.
Carroll added that the safe landing was a team effort between many people, both in the control tower and the pilot in the sky.
"It was all the right people in the right place at the right time. The tower was awesome and the pilot did a great job," Carroll said.
Source: http://www.wane.com
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