Landing mishap shuts runways down
<p>Fire engines and emergency personnel converge on a small plane with a nose-gear problem Wednesday morning at Glacier Park International Airport.</p>
<p>Ambulances, emergency vehicles and Flathead County Sheriff's deputies staged near a "Super Scooper" firefighting plane at Glacier Park International Airport during the response to a small plane with gear trouble at another part of the airport.</p>
Air traffic at Glacier Park International Airport was shut down for 25 minutes Wednesday morning after a small plane lost its nose gear while landing.
The V-tail Beechcraft Bonanza was coming in for a landing shortly after 10 a.m. on the main runway and had just touched down when the nose gear collapsed.
The plane had just completed a maintenance flight.
Emergency crews from the airport as well as area fire and ambulance services responded to the incident.
Airport Director Cindi Martin said no one was injured and the plane did not cause any damage to the runway.
“We were closed for about 25 minutes because the airplane stopped at the intersection of our runways,” Martin said, but added that no commercial landings or takeoffs were delayed.
At least one private plane’s landing apparently was delayed by the incident.
Martin said airport staffers performed “like clockwork,” since they train for such accidents on a regular basis.
“We don’t just wait for an incident like this to dust our equipment off,” she said. “We train every week, we do mutual aid training quarterly with the various agencies and we do annual emergency drills with all of the agencies.”
Reporter Jesse Davis may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at jdavis@dailyinterlake.com.