After burning off excess fuel for two hours to reduce risk of a possible fire, the pilot of a twin-engine aircraft with malfunctioning nose landing gear and two passengers on board made a safe emergency landing at Charleston's Yeager Airport on Tuesday as fire trucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles lined the runway.
Ten minutes before the landing, the 1976 Piper PA flew past Yeager's control tower to allow Federal Aviation Administration personnel to verify if the nose gear failed to deploy, as instruments aboard the aircraft indicated. After receiving word that the gear was only about 30 percent down, the pilot circled the airport a final time and began a landing approach. At about 4 p.m., the aircraft's rear gear touched down and the aircraft traveled on an even plane down the runway for several hundred yards before decelerating enough to cause the nose gear to contact the runway. A moment later, the plane nosed down and the aircraft pitched forward and came to an abrupt but safe upright stop after using less than one third of Yeager's runway.
Within a few seconds, an aircraft door opened and two young men in T-shirts and shorts exited the plane and jogged to a nearby fire truck parked along the runway. The man apparently piloting the plane joined them a few seconds later. No injuries were reported.
"I was told the people on board were a little nervous, but glad to be safely off the aircraft," Terry Sayre, Yeager's executive director, said a few minutes after the emergency landing.
The identities of the pilot and passengers weren't immediately known. According to its tail numbers, the aircraft was registered to G.B. Air in Jersey City, New Jersey, Sayre said.
The pilot was expected to be interviewed by an FAA investigator, who was on the scene at the time of the landing.
Yeager officials said the aircraft was in the process of returning to Frederick, Maryland, its point of departure, after completing an aerial survey job over West Virginia when its instruments indicated a problem with the nose gear.
After the landing, Yeager's runway remained closed for about 55 minutes while the aircraft was towed from the site and the pavement was swept for debris. One commercial flight had to be diverted before the runway was declared open by FAA officials.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5169 or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.