Plane Emergency Landing - nosewheel fails

A twin-propeller plane made a successful emergency landing at Toowoomba airport in southern Queensland on Wednesday after its nose wheel failed to deploy. Pilot Mark Crampton and his male co-pilot managed to touch down safely and without injury about 11:00am (AEST), after some anxious moments. The Beechcraft Baron 58 was returning to the Darling Downs city after dropping passengers at Hervey Bay on Queensland's Fraser coast. Shortly after taking off from Hervey Bay, Mr Crampton says he heard a large bang and a clunk while retracting the nose gear. He says he turned to his co-pilot and said: "That doesn't sound good." Mr Crampton says as they went to land his cockpit equipment indicated a fault with the landing gear. "We only had two green lights instead of three, which means the nose wheel isn't coming down," he said. After three failed attempts they tried to deploy the wheel manually but it still did not lock into place. He says they flew low over the airport and ground observers confirmed the nose wheel had not been properly released. Mr Crampton says he tried to land as gently as possible. "Even though I was extremely nervous it's amazing how the training kicks in," he said. "When you land you're still doing about 95 to 100 knots - so up near 200 kilometres an hour - so you're trying to slow the plane down with keeping the nose off as long as you can. "But when that nose drops in it's a pretty scary sound, and we were out of that plane as fast as we could because I wasn't interested in a barbeque, I can tell you."