Small plane belly-lands at island airport, no one hurt

Sunday 03rd August, 05:17 PM JST

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14 Comments

presto345 at 05:36 PM JST - 3rd August

A very happy ending to a very careless mistake.
BigRobu at 06:18 PM JST - 3rd August

props (literaly) to the pilot. Not an easy thing to do.
rajakumar at 06:59 PM JST - 3rd August

Good.
romulus3 at 08:25 PM JST - 3rd August

Oikawa told the airport office he forgot to release the wheels at the time of landing

what a knob.
USNinJapan2 at 09:16 PM JST - 3rd August

BigRobu

Not an easy thing to do.

This pilot did absolutely nothing and deserves no credit whatsoever. He didn't perform a dangerous belly landing on purpose; he forgot to lower his landing gear, meaning when he touched down on the runway he wasn't aware that he didn't have any undercarriage under him. He flared out above the runway expecting the familiar bump of the wheels touching down but instead kept going down until the fuselage crashed into the asphalt, the propeller blades snapped and flew off, and the plane went scraping down the runway amid a shower of sparks. This can't be excused simply as a careless mistake. This pilot is an incompetent idiot who shouldn't be allowed to pilot any aircraft let alone one with five passengers aboard. Sorry if I seem harsh but as a pilot I find this his ineptitude intolerable.
JohnBecker at 09:27 PM JST - 3rd August

Sorry if I seem harsh but as a pilot I find this his ineptitude intolerable.

USN, I wouldn't go so far as to call the pilot an incompetent idiot or "inept," but you're close to right. We know nothing about the man's level of experience - for all we know, this could be a 3,000 hour pilot with a spotless record until now. I've been a pilot for almost 15 years now and keep hearing about those who fly retractable-gear aircraft: "There are those who have, and those who will." I know you don't hear that in the Navy, but you do at every little local airport in the U.S.

Curious... how do you say "GUMP" in Japanese? (Pre-emptive notice to Mod: "GUMP" is an acronym for "Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Prop", a quick pre-landing checklist for pilots of retractable gear aircraft.)
USNinJapan2 at 09:57 PM JST - 3rd August

JohnBecker

Sorry, you have me confused with the "There are those who have, and those who will." Can you explain?

I know I'm not being very tolerant here. Perhaps I would be if this guy had this mishap alone but I just feel that a pilot who, regardless of how many hours he's logged, is capable of forgetting something as basic and critical as lowering the landing gear shouldn't be flying with any passengers over open ocean. This pilot was very very lucky in this case and as a pilot you know as I do that lucky is the last thing we should be proud of being or aspired to be.
GW at 10:35 PM JST - 3rd August

this ""pilot"" is a total imbecile, I guess we can be thankful he made sure there was fuel in his tanks before he took off, they shud take his car drving license away as well as his pilots license, as bugs bunny wud say WHATTA MARUUUN
northlondon at 12:53 AM JST - 4th August

Small plane belly-lands at island airport in Tokyo

at an airport on Kozu Island, about 170 kilometers south of Tokyo in the Pacific

So which is it Japan Today ? Tokyo, or an island in the Pacific 170 kilometers south of Tokyo ? Tokyo is not 170 kilometers in circumference. Your attention-seeking headlines are a disgrace to the 'profession' of journalism.
Sarge at 01:08 AM JST - 4th August

North - Calm down! Tokyo has many outlying islands, some of which are as far as 1,850 km from central Tokyo! Can you believe that...
NeoJamal at 03:56 AM JST - 4th August

Bitching Bettys would be ideal for solo pilots on approach.

"one-thousand" whoop whoop "check gear"
roomtemperature at 01:21 PM JST - 4th August

northlondon

Kozushima is a part of Tokyo-To and one of the Izu islands, So, it IS Tokyo. Do your homework before you disgrace yourself.
delitachan at 06:13 AM JST - 5th August

Nobody was hurt, thank God.
BigRobu at 06:44 AM JST - 12th August

oops didnt see the sentence about forgetting to deploy the landing gear. Thanks for the criticism. I deserve it.