JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A pilot landed without his landing gear down Tuesday morning at Herlong Recreational Airport on Jacksonville's Westside.
Witnesses said the plane skidded to a stop, and the pilot wasn't injured.
A tow truck moved the Navy T-34 from the runway to a hangar. It didn't appear to be severely damaged.
A flight instructor at the airport said there are ways a pilot can get distracted up in the air. He said there's also a chance the pilot faced a mechanical issue.
Sage Foster, with A-Cent Aviation, said a friend who is also a flight instructor witnessed the hard landing.
"By the time he stood up to even wave at the guy, it landed," Foster said. "So it was a normal landing, the wheels just were up. He skidded to a stop. That's usually the case most of the time with the gear up."
Foster said pilots are trained for landings like that one.
"We've seen it on TV quite a bit. They actually have an emergency they call in, so we're trained to control these aircraft," Foster said. "Basically, they still handle the same with the gear up. It's just when you hear it scraping down the runway, that's something new you haven't heard before."
It's still unclear why the pilot didn't put the landing gear down, if he was distracted or if there was a mechanical error. But Foster said he trains all his students to double- and triple-check before heading for the ground.
"The training process, you do your landing check list and you confirm three green -- if you have three green, that will mean you have three wheels down," Foster said. "If you get three lights, that confirms they're down."
Foster still believes flying is much safer than driving and said he is happy to know the pilot is alright.
"At the end of the day, that's all that matters. Equipment can be replaced and whatever, but human life is the thing that was protected," Foster said.
Airport personnel will be interviewing the pilot to figure out exactly what went wrong.