7 Aboard Unhurt as Veteran Pilot Brings In Crippled Charter Plane

The pilot of a twin-engine plane with six San Joaquin Valley businessmen aboard made a successful no-wheels landing at Van Nuys Airport on Monday afternoon after the plane’s landing gear malfunctioned on a flight from Visalia to Bakersfield.

When the Beechcraft King Air turboprop skidded to a stop almost undamaged, pilot Willie Stone got out and declared the incident “not that big a deal.” Half an hour later, he boarded another plane to fly home to Visalia.

During a 90-minute aerial drama, Stone, 46, first flew to Fresno and circled the city while consulting technicians of the Beech Aircraft Corp. on how to get the landing gear down. When their advice didn’t help, he flew to Los Angeles to get out of a thick San Joaquin Valley fog for his emergency landing.

Stone, a pilot for a Visalia air charter company called Shanair, said the three-wheel retractable landing gear failed as he was preparing to land just before noon on a 15-minute flight to Bakersfield.

Emergency Method Failed

Stone, a 22-year veteran of flying, said he headed back toward Visalia and tried to pump the landing gear into position manually, using the standard emergency procedure.

“I found I couldn’t get it down in the emergency method,” he said.

He said he flew on to Fresno and called the Beechcraft maintenance facility there on an air-to-ground telephone. The factory technicians called the Beechcraft factory in Wichita.

“We had a big party line going,” Stone said.

Following instructions, the pilot and his passengers pulled up the plane’s floorboards to try other procedures. Nothing worked.

So Stone headed for Los Angeles, where visibility was excellent.

In the meantime, Shanair’s president and chief pilot took off in another of the company’s planes, met Stone’s plane in the air and accompanied it to Los Angeles.

The company officials landed first to watch Stone’s landing from the ground.

Skidded 1,000 Feet

At about 1:30 p.m., the Beechcraft F90 touched down on the runway, skidded about 1,000 feet without any apparent bumps and stopped in front of the Beechcraft hangar.

“It was real good,” airport manager Charles Zeman said. “He had all the engines stopped. He came in on the center of the runway and kept it on the center of the runway all the way.”

Stone and his passengers calmly stepped from the plane. No one was injured. In the landing, the plane’s air flaps were damaged and cooling scoops under the engines were scraped off, Stone said. That was the only damage.

Stone said the plane’s two main wheels, situated in the engine compartments under the wings, helped cushion the landing, even though they were still retracted. The plane carries oversized tires for landing on rough surfaces and the tires protrude about three inches below the engines in flight, he said.

Three of the businessmen, who had intended to fly on to Santa Monica on Monday, stayed in Los Angeles, Stone said. The other three got on the company’s other plane and returned to Visalia, he said.

The cause of the malfunction is still not known.