A hero pilot has been praised after a Flybe aircraft dramatically crash landed in Belfast without its front wheel – the airline’s second landing gear failure in months.
Fifty two passengers and four crew members were on board Flybe flight BE331 to Inverness when it carried out an emergency landing with the front of the aircraft unsupported.
It comes just months after a Flybe plane from Edinburgh was evacuated when its landing gear collapsed during touchdown at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
Today the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 was forced to circle at 3,800 feet after the pilot realised there was a problem with the nose gear just moments after the aircraft’s 11:20am take-off from George Best Airport in Belfast.
After an hour of trying to work out how to fix the problem mid-air the captain declared an emergency and continued to circle in a bid to burn off fuel before attempting to land with just two of the plane’s three wheels working.
The Flybe aircraft carrying 52 passengers and four crew carried out an emergency landing in Belfast International Airport after its landing gear failed to deploy when the aircraft attempted to land.
The aircraft circled Belfast for two hours before the captain elected to land with the nose gear up leaving the aircraft sliding along the runway to be met by fire and rescue crews
The pilot attempted to keep the nose up for as long as possible before it hit the runway and skidded to a stop.
It meant that the propeller aircraft’s nose was left skidding along the runway as it came to a halt on the tarmac in Belfast.
Hailing the actions of the crew, Brian Strutton, general secretary of pilots’ union Balpa, said: ‘Landing without a nose gear is a very difficult manoeuvre, but one pilots train extensively for.
Flybe said one passenger was taken to hospital with a minor hand injury. No other casualties were reported, an airline spokeswoman said.
The Air Accident Investigations Branch confirmed they were sending a team of experts to look into today’s incident in an effort to determine what happened.
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