Disaster averted: Pilot sticks emergency landing at Huntingburg Airport

“This was a great example of having the training, the people and the equipment to coordinate and respond to a potentially disastrous situation quickly and then everyone being able to go home safe,” Huntingburg Airport Manager Travis McQueen said Saturday morning after a local plane and its two occupants were forced to make an emergency landing.

After learning that a local plane would be returning to the airport and landing without one of its landing gear working properly, local emergency responders and law enforcement began making preparations at the airport.

Huntingburg police and Dubois County Sheriff’s deputies shut down U.S. 231 while members of the Huntingburg and St. Henry Volunteer Fire Departments and Memorial Hospital Emergency Medical Services waited in preparation to respond to the craft potentially crashing.

Local pilot and former airport board member Bob Duncan and airport employee Andy Kippenbrock were also there to help coordinate any emergency response actions if they were required. Duncan’s experience as a military pilot assisted in coordinating the response, according to McQueen.

However, disaster was averted as the copilot of the aircraft was able to bring the plane in at about 80 mph, touch down with the operable rear landing gear before laying the nose of the craft down on the runway.

McQueen estimated that after the copilot allowed the plane’s nose to touch down on the runway, the plane used about a thousand feet of the runway to slow to a stop. At the end of the run, the copilot steered the plane between two lights off the south side of the runway into the grass.

The situation began as the plane and its two occupants, pilot and copilot, headed to Columbus with a group of pilots. After arriving in Columbus, they learned the front landing gear would not deploy. Rather than land there, the pilots made the decision to return to Huntingburg Airport.

After arriving, they circled the airport going through every possible contingency to get the landing gear to operate so they could land. “They did everything they know to do in the air,” McQueen said.

But when none of their efforts worked, they made the decision to land the plane without the front landing gear.

“He did a phenomenal job,” McQueen said about the landing. “The landing is testament to the skills of a highly experienced pilot with a lot of time flying that aircraft.”

The unique flight characteristics of the plane—the main wings are positioned to the rear of the plane’s fuselage—added to the difficulty of the landing, McQueen said.

Damages to the plane were minimal consisting of scratches and dents to the fiberglass bottom of the front of the plane that skidded on the runway. “It’s a really easy repair according to the aircraft’s owner,” McQueen said.

He added that the landing gear did not deploy due to a mechanical obstruction.