Four and a half hours of anxiety, then relief.
The teams at La Rochelle-Ile de Ré airport had to manage, on Saturday January 13, a fortunately extremely rare experience: helping a plane land on the runway, with landing gear up.
The Piper PA-31e based in Rouen (Seine-Maritime), flying for the company Pix Air Survey, was carrying out a mission to take aerial photos above La Rochelle when, around 12:30 p.m., the crew, made up of two pilots, decides to land.
But, during the landing procedure, the crew noticed a problem with the plane’s undercarriage. The traditional “three points” does not come out. The pilots then returned to the ocean to try to find the cause of the failure.
The Mont-de-Marsan fighter squadron was immediately alerted. A Rafale fighter jet was scrambled to observe the wheels locking and to establish contact.
The twin-engine pilot landed on a runway prepared for an emergency landing: a foam mat, deployed by the airport firefighters.
The two crewmen were unhurt.