A small plane that suffered a landing gear malfunction was forced to land with only one wheel.
The Cape Air plane descended on a runway at Boston Logan International Airport on Tuesday afternoon with just one wheel under the left wing extended.
Video footage shows the Cessna 402C approaching Runway 22 and landing on the one wheel and balancing well as it continued to move down the tarmac.
The nose of the plane eventually dipped forward and the aircraft veered to the right, before coming to a halt.
No smoke or fire was seen.
‘It was a textbook landing,’ aviation expert John Nance told WCVB.
‘He did it exactly right.’
Cape Air stated: ‘The pilot performed the appropriate checklist and landed the aircraft back at Boston Logan Airport.’
Emergency and fire vehicles with their lights activated surrounded the plane and a crane lifted it off the runway.
The pilot and two passengers got off the aircraft safely.
‘This isn’t something you want to experience – whether you’re flying a 747, Cessna, or any other airplane,’ said Nance.
Cape Air Flight 126 departed Boston shortly before 2.30pm for Bar Harbor, Maine, but the pilot encountered a landing gear issue shortly afterward, according to Cape Air. The pilot circled for nearly an hour before attempting to land back at the departure airport around 3.15pm.
A commercial pilot, Patrick Smith, commended the landing.
‘They certainly knew what they were dealing with and what was going to happen. The technique here on to touchdown would be to keep the plane up on the existing landing gear as long as possible,’ he told WBZ.
‘That’s not easy to do and at a certain point, once you run out of speed, the plane is going to drop onto the other side.’
The incident, which is being investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration, caused some delays in arrivals at the airport.
Passengers boarding other Cape Air flights going the same route heard the news, and some did not seem worried.
‘It’s much more risky to have cars. It’s more risky to have motorcycles,’ said passenger Friedrich Caspers.
‘It’s the safest way to take a plane and if it happens that’s fate.’
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