Cape Air Smacks Runway

An emergency landing for a Cape Air flight is a happy ending for five passengers and one pilot. The plane landed at the Barnstable municipal airport last night after the pilot reported having trouble with the landing gear. From the photo it certainly looks that way.

  The big boys up in Boston wrote this up for us: Five passengers and the pilot of a Cape Air plane escaped injury Saturday night when the pilot was forced to land at Barnstable Municipal Airport with a malfunctioning nose gear.

The FAA says Cape Air Flight 311 took off from Boston and was headed for Martha's Vineyard. When the indicator light went on, the pilot decided to land at the Barnstable airport as a precaution. The pilot, John Call, 32, of Marshfield, reported the problem just after 7:15 p.m. He did several flybys of the airport while emergency vehicles were put into position.

Call landed the twin-engine Cessna 402 safely, but the nose of the plane collapsed and hit the tarmac during the emergency landing. Several agencies responded to the scene, including the Massachusetts State Police, Barnstable police, and the Hyannis Fire Department.

The airport was closed for about an hour.