Monterey - A military aircraft made an emergency landing at the Monterey Regional Airport on Tuesday night without incidence, according to the Monterey Fire Department.
The KC-10 Extender, which the Air Force describes on its website as a tanker and cargo aircraft tasked primarily with aerial refueling, had smoke in its cabin leading to the emergency landing, according to Stewart Roth of the Monterey Fire Department. It landed safely about 8 p.m.
"Following emergency protocols, they looked at their closest airport that could handle that size plane and Monterey was one of those so they made the emergency call," said Roth, a division chief who was the incident commander for the emergency landing.
The plane's flight originated from Travis Air Force Base, near Fairfield, and Roth said its planned destination was classified. He said the only people onboard were the five crew members.
"The fire attack group supervisor that was out there on one of the engines did talk to the pilots and his brief to me afterwards was that they were very calm, very cool and very collected and they handled it extremely well," Roth said.
When the plane landed, firefighters went out on the runway and inspected the aircraft. They determined the smoke may have been generated from a faulty air conditioning unit. The aircraft was taken to the airport's jet center to be worked on.
"All work on military planes has to be certified," Roth said.
According to Roth, the level of response was due in part to the amount of fuel on board.
Roth credited the merger of the airport's fire department and Monterey's department for the "seamless" response.
"You've got all of the resources under the same dispatch tones, managed under the same management level and chain of command so it flowed very smoothly," he said.
Source: http://www.insidebayarea.com
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