An incident at Victoria International Airport yesterday (Aug. 2) afternoon left the pilot and passenger of a small aircraft shaken, but uninjured after the landing gear of their small aircraft collapsed on the runway.
The aircraft, a Yak/Nanchang (Nanchang CJ-6A) style plane, had just returned from a flight at about 5 p.m. when, immediately after landing, the landing gear of the aircraft collapsed.
Rod Hunchak, the director of community relations for the YYJ Airport Authority, confirmed that the incident had occurred and that, as per normal airport protocols, emergency equipment was immediately dispatched to the runway.
“The plane was damaged and had to be towed off the runway, but that was the extent of the incident,” said Hunchak.
“It’s very rare that something like this will happen, but it’s the sort of occurrence that can happen on rare occasions and it was dealt with through our normal procedures.”
The Yak Nanchang aircraft is similar to the vintage Chinese/Russian developed plane (the Yak-52) that has been causing the Russian Invasion forces in Ukraine problems as it’s been used by Ukrainian fighters to shoot down Russian surveillance drones.
While the planes do not have any armament, the crews have been simply maneuvering to within shotgun range of intruding drones—and blasting them out of the air.
Jeff Morris, a small aircraft pilot and the president of Sidney’s Angel Flight said that an incident of this kind would be extremely rare.
“The thing is, that most small aircraft have fixed undercarriages but the CJ-6A, which is a Chinese copy of a Russian aircraft developed back in the 1970’s has retractable landing gear,” said Morris. “They are great planes, but something like this can happen. It’s just a good thing that no one was hurt.”
