Air-medic crew OK after belly landing

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - On two wings and a prayer an Albuquerque air-medic pilot belly-flopped his way to a safe landing at the Albuquerque Sunport Friday morning.

Imagine being hundreds of feet in the air and your pilot tells you the landing gear is stuck. Terry Bryan can imagine being that pilot.

Bryan is a medic pilot for an Albuquerque company. While he is not the pilot that was forced to make the emergency landing on Friday, he said he can feel the adrenaline rush the pilot must have had when he found out his landing gear was stuck.

It all started around 6 a.m. when the pilot flying for PHI realized the landing on his Cessna Conquest was stuck.

“You have several ways of checking that in the Conquest," Bryan explained. "Number one you have three green lights.

"When you put your landing gear selector down you should have those three green lights.”

At least one of those lights in the PHI aircraft must not have lit up, Bryan said.

“In the Conquest you can't see your landing gear from the cockpit, so you're relying on the instruments alone," he added.

So that's when another medic group boarded a helicopter and began circling the plane. The crew then used night-vision goggles to confirm the landing gear on the Cessna was not down.

During that time the pilot was circling the Sunport for more than half an hour to burn off fuel. A smart idea, according to Bryan.

“The wings in this plane are the fuel tanks, so of course when you do a wheels-up landing the wings are going to be touching the pavement," he said.

During those 30 minutes, Bryan said, the pilot was working out a plan like where the crew would sit, when to touch down and of course it doesn’t hurt to pray.

“On a wing and prayer as they say,” Bryan said.

While the Cessna suffered some damage in the landing, the pilot, medic and nurse aboard survived unhurt.