A Piper PA-23 Aztec made an emergency landing in St. Lucie County, Florida Friday morning.
According to the St Lucie County Sheriff’s Department, at around 10:15 in the morning the pilot operating the aircraft experienced an emergency when attempting to land. The Piper’s front landing gear failed to properly extend, prompting the pilot to engage in a controlled landing near the 15000 block of Skyking Drive at Treasure Coast Airpark.
The aircraft can be seen in photos from the incident mostly intact, with its nose facing downward, resting against the runway, while the rear landing gear wheels appear properly deployed. The full extent of the damage to the aircraft is unclear at this time.
The pilot sustained no injuries as he was able to exit the aircraft on his own accord. No other passengers were reported on board at the time of the emergency landing.
The FAA is not classifying the landing as a crash, per the Sheriff’s Department.
This story was updated to accurately reflect the aircraft’s location at the time of the incident.
Is this more AI reporting? It makes it sound like the plane landed on a city street! It sure looks like it was on the runway at Treasure Coast Airpark.
And the FAA doesn’t classify anything as a “crash”.
As per 49 CFR 830.2 and 830.5, no, this is not classified as an accident. We actually do have rules regarding such things. A gear up landing is generally filed as an incident unless the circumstances specified in above FARs are met. A simple gear up landing usually doesn’t meet the criteria of major damage or serious injuries.
Here is more information:
There needs to be an experienced pilot writing these reports and a good editor checking them. Is there a runway “near the 15000 block of Skyking Drive”? Yes!
I’d be interested to hear AvWeb’s reply on how this misleading article was published.
Is it considered “reporting” if it only slightly re-phrases a Twitter post, adding no salient information? Throw in a couple of obvious (to pilots) easily verified errors (“city street”?) and one could assert that there was no “intelligence”, artificial or otherwise, evidenced by this article.
And people wonder why we don’t like AI-assisted “reporting.”
If it’s NOT AI, it’s certainly NOT an experienced aviation “reporter” who wrote the story.
No experienced pilot or aviation journalist would have said, “…rear landing gear…”, nor would one have missed the fact that the airplane landed a few hundred feet south of an actual runway, at an airpark, either. “Sky King” drive might have been a tip-off. But not to a stenographer for AI.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised after Firecrown chased away all their actual reporters.
He did! It’s an aviation community with a paved runway a few hundred feet to the north of “Sky King” drive, parallel to the street.
We updated this story to more accurately reflect the aircraft’s location at the time of the incident.
Good luck with that.