Landings with faulty gear are common and almost always uneventful but a Canadian seaplane pilot found himself in an unusual predicament on Saturday. The gear on the amphib floats on Paul Armstrong’s Cessna 206 only partly deployed so he was caught between a wet and a hard place. Landing on water would have flipped the aircraft because some of the wheels were down. Landing on concrete would have had the same result because some of the wheels were still tucked in the floats. So the pilot, air traffic control and officials at Buttonville Airport in Toronto cooked up a plan with the help of the local fire department.
While Armstrong did some sightseeing, the fire department showed up with a tanker and pumper and wet down a grass area beside the runway. After they poured a few thousand gallons of water on the grass, it was all up to Armstrong to make the best of the compromise and he did it in fine style. The plane slid to the shortest landing it had likely ever done, rocked forward, but remained upright and suffered little damage. Flight instructor Humberto Villalobos caught it on video. A blown hydraulic seal was the culprit.
