(Credit: Meike Rei)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

no injuries

Plane makes emergency landing at Red Deer Airport

Jun 22, 2019 | 5:35 PM

Miraculously, everyone is okay after an airplane landed at Red Deer Airport on Saturday without its full landing gear engaged.

Airport CEO Graham Ingham says the incident happened around 12:20 p.m.

“We had an Air Spray air tanker, an Electra-type aircraft, perform an emergency landing due to the fact it couldn’t get its main landing gear down,” he explained.

“After a couple of attempts, they decided that it would be safer to do a wheels up landing, and subsequently they did. Thankfully they came to a complete stop.

“There were no injuries, no fire and it was the best outcome for everyone.”

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Transport Canada and Air Spray are looking into why the aircraft was having trouble. It’s also not known yet where the plane departed from and if Red Deer was its intended destination.

Springbrook resident Meike Rei says she was out for a walk near the airport when she saw things go awry.

“First I heard all the fire trucks while getting ready for my walk, and I didn’t think anything by it. When I was close to the multiplex, I saw the airplane circling and it looked like there was smoke on one side of the plane, but not much of it,” Rei says.

“Then I kept walking and saw some people from the barracks running towards the airport and I followed them. In that moment, the plane came down and to me it looked like the wheels on the right side didn’t come out.”

Red Deer County and Red Deer City emergency crews both responded to the scene.

Air Spray is an Edmonton-based company which has provided aerial wildfire suppression since 1954.

rdnewsNOW has also reached out to Air Spray for comment.