Eagle Gear up Emergency Landing in WB
 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/302540.jpg
LATEST: A passenger aircraft has made a safe emergency landing at Blenheim's Woodbourne airport after sparking a full emergency with landing gear problems.
A Fire Service spokesman said the plane, with 15 passengers and two crew, had problems with its undercarriage.
It landed on its belly, screeching to a halt just outside the control tower just after 9am.
The badly damaged aircraft was sprayed with foam.
One passenger was taken to hospital for treatment.
The aircraft was an Air New Zealand Link plane on a flight from Timaru to Wellington when it diverted to Blenheim.
The passengers are receiving counselling from volunteers at the Royal New Zealand Air Force's air movements centre at the base.
The airport will be closed for two hours while cranes are brought in to remove the wreckage.
The aircraft was operated by Air New Zealand subsidiary Eagle Air.

Looks like the boys had a hard morning at the office. Well done lads getting it on the ground safely! :ok:

Eagle Air B1900 belly-landing at NZWB
 

Story at NZHerald.co.nz

Good to see plane down safely and no-one injured...

Glad everyone's okay....

A crane and a BROOM were required to clean up the wreckage....

Note to AirNZ... next time, don't forget that Blenheim is home to some of the top aviation photographers in the country! :}

On a serious note, well done to the crew, everyone walked away!

What a spectacular picture, glad to hear evryones OK!

Are they carbon fibre blades?

Well done...

Hope no-one is missing a torch...

Good work from the crew,
That means wheels ups for their last three types with the Bandit in AA and a Metro in HN. Eagle has had some crap luck.

well done
 

Well done buddy, You Are a star for landing the plane like that!

I've always wondered what sort of mess the props would make, I guess now I know!

Sounds like a well managed situation, well done to all concerned.

It will buff out..........

Well done to all involved........Excellent job:ok:

Props are cheap compared to the massive cock-ups that can happen feathering props on short final.

17 bums = christ knows how many ambulance chasing lawyers

If something had of gone wrong

They were...

Damn ugliest Beechcraft ever built.

Glad to hear it Sir Pratt.

The owner of the photo should send it onto Airliners.net with the right exposure it could generate him/her some money.

A MAF pilot in Gove a few years back found out why you don't shut the engines down on short finals, as you may not glide as well as you thought you might and you might not make the runway :\

Eggzackery :D

Yikes

Can't imagine how happy the folk beside the props were seeing blades hurtling off the hub.:eek:

Dobt reckon the skin of the beach is bullet proof...nor prop proof. I guess thats just lucky.

Glad to hear all is good for pax and crew.:ok:

SQ

Keeps you working Sir Pratt
Thats wot pilots is for.

sir.pratt

While I see where you're coming from, and yes the Metro was landed with props feathered aswell, this sort of situation is not the time to be deviating from QRH proceedure, which clearly states that no engines will be shut down or props feathered until after touchdown.

The skin of the 1900 is reinforced around the prop plane, except a small area where the windows are located.

As also posted in R & N http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3355472
http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/302540.jpg

Is that engine a gas coupled prop gear box thingy or direct drive?

Gas tinni, like all the PT6 engines...much the same engine as the PC12.

Ok tah...um... why doesnt it have proper metal propellors?

No idea, think all C and D models have composite props.

Of course common sense comes into it if it's just a suspected indication problem, but I believe in this case (total loss of hydraulic fluid) there would have been no choice. If I understand the system correctly, the gear should have gravity fallen (to some extent) when a manual extension was attemped, and retracted again as the aircraft touched down, all though this doesn't seem backed up by the initial reports. Anyone see it or here exactly what happened?

Great effort on the crew's part...earned their coin for day, and some more :ok:

I know several Eagle Drivers from Blenheim, all top bokes - no idea who the crew were however at this stage...

Don't send this to the newspapers but gas coupled, not sure about the props but look composite by the way they are shatering. No idea

Seems an odd design that you can only unlock the gear with hyd fluid. Why not install a manual cable to release the locks?? Unless the hyd backup is supposedly fail safe?

Sorry if I've misconstrued you SirP but I bet that wasn't the biggest thing going through the Crews mind on short finals on a once in a career event...lets disregard the FCOM (or whatever a 1900 has) so we don't get picked apart on PPrune by an Engineer. :yuk:

Looks like the blades have come out of the hubs, not shattered.

On Guard

There are no mechanical uplocks like other aircraft, the gear is held up by hydraulic pressure.

sir.pratt

Thanks for the explanation, when you talk about unlocking, are you referring to a fluid lock? Or is there some major part of the system that they don't teach we at the pointy end about?

Follow the checklist!
 

As a former Eagle motors 1900 driver, you follow the checklist, and that quite clearly calls for securing the engines after touchdown. That's what any professional pilot would do. It saves legal issues. Lives are more expensive than engines and all professional engineers respect this. I'm know that this airframe will operate again and Blenheim is a major Eagle engineering base so good team decisions made here. Bloody well done!

Small discussion here also, http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...=1#post3355596
including a video link (TV3 News, mainly interviews with a few pax, but at least one bit of footage of the aircraft landing.)
Well done!

Wheels-up.
 

It would seem, by all reports that the crew handled that emergency very well indeed. Perhaps as a result of the high standards required in Eagle Checks, and command upgrades that so many have been mocking recently??

Just a thought...

XRNZAF.....their training should and would be no different to any one elses,,...lets get off the white horse here mate!!!

.....in saying that, my sentiments are like those of the rest...well done,and each and every crew does have to perform and perform well in these situations...it was a great result considering the situation....

ok.....
 

I've never worked for this outfit, so I cannot, and therefore am not trying to compare Eagle Air's Check and Training to anyone elses. But I do have a regular flick through these forums and have recently noticed page after page of people bagging the place and bleating on about how the selection process would better suit a space shuttle than a 'glorified duchess'. Although I'm sure many of the concerns raised are valid, I can't help wondering if perhaps there might be some vindication today.

When things stop going to plan in ANY aeroplane regardless of size, speed, number of seats etc. I would expect (either as a passenger or pilot) that all crew members were the very best of the bunch put up for selection at the time of their intake. And that the check and training process they had been through should have been as stringent as possible.

Long story short, I don't think any operator should ever have to make excuses for setting the bar high. And I just think today was a good reminder of why.

Here endeth the rant. :oh:

XRNZAF.

Feathered/unfeathered argument.

An feathered prop is much more likely to dig into the ground on touch down than an unfeathered prop, which is much more likely to bend or break. There have been incidents in that past with conventional (aluminium) blades where a feathered prop has dug in causing the aircraft to flip over.

Rego
 

Rego is ZK-EAK or Echo Alpha KILLED. 'KILLED' has been a bit of a sh^t of a plane. It's had a number of hiccups and dramas in its time in service.
Got a BIG lightening strike in TG about a year ago that grounded it for a week there. Blew a hole in the tail, among many other things.

Great job from the guys today though - some might hope they killed 'KILLED'! :)

As an aside, who remembers the Bandit wheel that came off once lowerer causing the wheels up @ NZPM. Must be close to being 20 years ago?! They picked up the plane - was it FHX?? - dusted it off, threw on some new fairings, filed the props and flew it gear down, back to HN. And all about two days after!

From memory that was an engines off landing. And they laid foam that caused it to move around on the 'landing roll'!

Where is Capt Craig and F/O Lance these days?:ok:

27/09 I agree entirely!!!!
I have heard stories of engines being ripped off mounts or entire wings being destroyed and thus the airframe totalled all because a feathered prop dug into the runway (or earth if landing off runway).
Also in the case of a gear malfunction with the gear down for eg but maybe not locked ,if it does collapse entirely or 1 side or nose, if its turning and strikes it will bend or break on contact but if feathered a dig in or the much higher contact resistance will likely result in a total loss of what little directional control may be available and possibly result in a violent groundloop or overturn and cartwheel. :eek:

Sir.pratt; As a fare paying pax, I would be expecting the pilot to put it down in the safest possible manner, not the cheapest. :hmm:

would it be rude to say that the result was within design specifications?