Johannesburg - A light aircraft had to land on its undercarriage at Lanseria Airport on Thursday morning after its landing gear is believed to have failed, but none of the four people aboard were injured.
This comes 10 days after a similar craft crashed into an embankment near Lanseria’s runway, killing all three people on board.
The airport’s spokeswoman, Claudette Vianello, said the twin-propeller Beechcraft Baron 58 was landing at roughly 8.30am.
“As it came in for landing, the undercarriage collapsed or failed on landing,” she said, adding that she would not define this incident as a crash.
“Luckily, there were no injuries whatsoever.”
She said the runway was closed for about 45 minutes while the plane was moved and the airport’s operations were “running completely normal” soon afterwards.
However, she urged anyone flying from Lanseria on Thursday to check with their airline before going to the airport.
At the time of publication, she did not have any information on the operator of the craft or where it had flown in from.
On February 3, a twin-propeller Beechcraft King Air BE90 flying to Lanseria from Rand Airport crashed near the runway at about 7am and burst into flames.
At the time, Vianello said it may have been a “controlled flight into terrain crash”, with the pilot trying to avoid crashing into a building due to rain and poor visibility.
The Star