No injuries after plane makes emergency landing at Rankin Inlet airport

Operations at Rankin Inlet Airport returned to normal after a twin-engine plane made an emergency landing there Tuesday when its landing gear failed to deploy.

The pilot of a Beechcraft King Air 200 plane discovered a problem with the nose landing gear while preparing to land, said Chris Krepski, a spokesperson for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, in an email to Nunatsiaq News on Wednesday.

That forced the pilot to take extra measures to land safely at 8:14 p.m., he said.

None of the eight people on board, including the crew, were injured, but the plane sustained damage to its nose, propellers and engines, Krepski said.

Rankin Inlet emergency responders were alerted and were already at the airport when the plane landed, a news release issued by the Government of Nunavut said.

The Air Nunavut plane was flying to Rankin Inlet from Baker Lake, Lindsay Cadenhead, the airline’s director of flight operations, confirmed in a phone call.

Before landing, it circled the airport for about 45 minutes to burn off fuel and to avoid interfering with other aircraft at the airport.

“The flight crew did a fantastic job under the circumstances,” Cadenhead said, adding the cause of the incident is being investigated by Air Nunavut.

“Our position right now is that it’s a mechanical issue that was outside of the means of crew.”

The plane’s crew as well as the hamlet’s emergency services workers were recognized Wednesday in the legislative assembly by Rankin Inlet South MLA Lorne Kusugak.

“I’d like to thank the fire department and emergency crew in Rankin,” he said. “Everyone was prepared for the incident.”